Chapter Text
Izuku doesn’t start hearing them for nearly two months after he last speaks to Yagi.
It starts with a little boy. Maybe it always had. Maybe it always starts with a little boy, who is quirkless or abused or forgotten or or or. This time, it starts with a normal, average, perfectly unremarkable little boy.
There is a little boy, and there is a man standing above him, an empty bottle in hand. He swings down, and Izuku is still standing at the other end of the alley.
The glass glints in the sunlight.
It isn’t night. Crimes do not only happen at night. They aren’t even that much more common at night. Crimes and attacks and abuse and and and. They all occur in the daylight just as often. People just don’t look. People ignore.
Izuku doesn’t.
Izuku sees and sees and sees, and he is too far away.
There is a little boy and there is a man who is trying to hurt him and Izuku is too. Far. Away.
It must be pure desperation, Izuku muses later, that causes it.
Because Izuku is far too away to reach, but a half-moment, a single instant before the jagged glass can make contact with the boy’s head, strands of black black black ink stretch out and grab.
It might start with the little boy.
It might start with Izuku himself. It might start with the proclaimed ‘symbol of peace.’ It might start with this or that or that or this. It may start from lots of things. It starts, and Izuku is along for the ride.
Perhaps that isn’t the right wording. Not quite along for the ride.
After all, Izuku has never once taken anything passively if it wasn’t for the sake of others. If he hadn't had any other choice. Not even from All Might himself.
-
Izuku can hardly breathe as he waits on the rooftop, watches as the only competent police team in the city picks up the drunk father, shove him none-too-gently into the car. There’s a reason he calls Tsukauchi, for these things.
The detective knows he’s still nearby. Sometimes, he gets bored or impatient or some other type of way, and sends his men out to canvas, to try and find him. It’s never gotten close to working. This time, he doesn’t bother, so Izuku watches crouched in the darkness from the roof. He has the little boy tucked under his arm. He hadn’t wanted to talk to the police.
Izuku had left a short message to Tsukauchi. They’ll hold the man overnight to let the alcohol leave his system. By then, Izuku will bring the boy to the police, or will find him some other place safe, far away from his father.
He’s reeling, to say the least. All Might gave him his quirk. His quirk. Only his quirk. All Might’s quirk is not strange, impossibly dark tendrils of impossibly-textured solid ink.
Izuku is quirkless. Izuku is physically and biologically quirkless. He knows this. He has weird feet and is a little too short and a little too slow to gain weight and muscle and a little less everything else. He does not have a quirk. He cannot. Not even some strange, stress induced one. He had not had a deactivated quirk factor, like some quirkless kids. He had not had a quirk factor, before One For All had ignited a still-not-quite-natural warmth in his chest.
The boy shakes.
There is no hesitation in throwing the train of thought out of his mind.
“Are you okay?” he asks, so so softly. He makes himself a little smaller, a little less imposing. He hopes that his mask and hood aren’t scaring the little kid. “Are you hurt, at all? Even from a different day?”
The boy looks up at him, and his big eyes are still watery. The red and blue of the police cruiser reflects brilliantly in them as the car pulls away. His lip quivers. “I’m- I’m alright. Just… Just a couple old bruises. He hasn’t been… like this, before.”
Izuku still feels the urge to go scream in a pillow until all the rage and injustice inside of him goes away, but he feels a tiny bit better knowing that this kid hasn’t had his life threatened often. “Alright,” he says lightly. “That’s good! Thank you for telling me. There’s a great ramen place a few blocks down. Why don’t we go get something to eat?”
-
He watches with hawk eyes as the boy walks, nervous but determined, into the police station. He leans a little lower to watch through the reflective glass, can just barely make out one of Tsukauchi’s men go to greet him. He lets out a short breath.
Okay.
Okay. Now. Time to figure out the mystery quirk.
-
It takes him far too long to finally enter his apartment. It’s another half hour of undressing, hiding the costume under his favorite floorboard (it’s starting to get noticeable in the wear along the grain, but it’s the best hiding spot he has that’s easily accessible, right now), and washing away a night and half-day’s worth of sweat off of himself. He’s barely sat down on the floor and opened his laptop when it first starts.
“He’s a good one.”
“He is.”
It’s less than a second later that he’s standing and braced for an attack. His socks slide against the floor when he tries to plant his weight. He feels like he just got sucker punched.
“Oh!”
“No way!”
“Yes!”
“Finally!”
He can’t see anyone. It doesn’t mean anyone isn’t in his apartment, invisibility and camouflage quirks aren’t as rare as one might think, not to mention any other type of quirk that would allow one to hide or remain out of his perception of sight. But if he can’t see someone, it makes it far harder to fight.
“A paranoid one, too.”
He whirls around, stares at his locked window for a beat before raking his gaze over every inch of his apartment.
“I wouldn’t say paranoid so much as reasonably cautious. I imagine it’s fairly frightening to be in his position, right now.”
“I agree. It can’t be very fun to suddenly sprout some new quirk he’s never seen before and then have a buncha different voices in his head.”
...A quirk, maybe. Something that infected him, like a virus or infection. Got to his brain. Alters his perception, confuses.. Gives him access to something else, someone else’s thoughts or point of view. Maybe a drug he had somehow been given, injected with or inhaled.
“Smart one, too.”
“Obviously. We already knew that.”
“Seconded.”
The idea that they’re hallucinations only lasts a moment. He’s- rarely- fully rested right now, and even when he does get tired enough for hallucinations, they’re never this clear or unthreatening.
“Who wants to take the explanation? Did we ever decide?”
“First? Or Seven. You’d be good at it, and-”
“Yeah, yeah. She has tact I don’t.”
Izuku kind of wants to cry. He can’t see anyone, not even the shimmer of light irregularities you can usually find in camouflage quirks if you know to look for. Not against any of the walls or standing on the counters or crawling on the ceiling. He doesn’t know where these people are.
“Hey, kiddo!”
He lets out a slow breath.
“Hellooooo? Izuku?”
Okay. They know his name. Not… great.
“Kid! It’s hard to explain things when you don’t ask questions, ya know.”
The last few times has been the same voice. Light, amused. Feminine, probably, if a little deeper than what his mom sounds like, a lot deeper than girls his age. She sounds strong. Firm. He thinks he’d find it reassuring, any other time.
Let out another breath. He slowly stands up fully, allows his tense body to relax bit by bit. He keeps a hand clenched around the folded knife in his pocket.
“...Hi?”
“Hi, kiddo!” He can practically hear the grin in her voice. She sounds so happy. “It’s so nice that you can finally hear us! We’ve been dying to talk to you since we realized you’d probably be able to hear us.”
“...I’m glad I could make you happy. Who are you?”
She laughs. Now that he can fully focus on it, the voice sounds kind of muffled . Not by much, but maybe like he’s hearing it from a few feet further away than one would usually hold a conversation. Not quite in focus.
“ So good , ” she murmurs absently, before continuing in a stronger voice. “ My name is Nana Shimura. I’ll let the others introduce themselves later, but, in short, we’re the past holders of One For All.”
Okay, Izuku, don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. This is fine. This is so totally and completely fine. Nothing has ever been more fine than this.
Assuming for the time being that they’re telling the truth, this makes things. Complicated. By a lot.
It… makes sense, though. He hasn’t felt any presence like he’s been being watched, he hasn’t had any strange encounters the past few weeks, he hasn’t at all sensed someone’s quirk on him, and he feels in total control of himself. The thoughts don’t feel like his own. Not to mention, the new quirk. It definitely hadn’t been his, and it sure wasn’t All Might’s. He hasn’t run into All For One as far as he knows (and he thinks he’d know), so he’s not sure where else a new quirk from his body would come from.
“Alright,” he says at last. For now, he’ll believe them. Just for now. Just to see if he can get some answers. Just for a little bit. “It’s. Nice to meet you.”
Almost, he says please take care of me , but forces it back in his throat before it can leave. He gets the terrifyingly strong feeling that someone is cooing at him.
“It’s nice to meet you, kiddo,” Shimura says, so unbearably fond that Izuku wants to duck his head. There’s a chorus of equally soft hello s and it’s nice to meet you too s, maybe five or six.
Maybe it does always start with a little boy.
Maybe this time, it starts with a little boy who is oh so curious and who wants to help people more than anything in the entire world. A little boy who is hurt and bruised and burned, who has been stabbed in the back and left behind and seen the rottenness of humanity but still can love all of the good he sees in the world. A little boy who is strong beyond all belief.
This time, it starts with a little boy who has nothing but half of a mending relationship with his mom, a quirk he only half-understands and can’t quite control, and a sudden group of seven inside of his head.
-
They talk for hours. Izuku’s throat burns by the end of it, not used to talking so much or for so long.
They’re patient in a way that no one has ever quite been before. They don’t seem to get annoyed when he goes off on tangents without meaning to, or when he asks invasive questions about their quirks. He learns their names, and doesn’t even accidentally get them confused.
They don’t talk about Toshinori Yagi. They don’t talk about the fact that half if not more of what he does on a daily basis is illegal in some way or another. They don’t talk about the fact that Izuku is fourteen and lives by himself in a city where no one knows his name or who he is.
They talk about hypotheses, about why only Izuku has been able to hear the others, why only Izuku has been able to access another’s quirk. They tell him that they think he’ll be able to use all of their quirks, eventually. Maybe even see them, if only in shadowy and vague forms.
The sun starts setting, and they start ganging up on him about not messing up his sleep schedule.
It probably says something about his self-preservation instinct that he sleeps even better than usual with seven new voices in his head that he isn’t even sure he trusts, yet.
-
The first thing he does the next day is climb the fire escape two buildings down from the little boy’s place last night. He swings himself over the short alley and silently pops the lock while sitting on a window sill. He makes sure the father isn’t in the house. Makes sure it doesn’t smell like alcohol or cigarettes. Makes sure the boy hasn’t been returned to an unsafe home.
After he's satisfied that no one had been in it for at least a day or so, he leaves. He gently folds and places a note on the trim in the closet. The boy would see it if he was sitting in there ever again. There’s nothing suspicious or indicative of his identity or crimes. Just a small message of hope and patience, a way to let the boy know how to contact him. The police probably wouldn’t understand the context clues, but he’s always cautious enough anyway that if they do decipher the meaning, he likely wouldn’t be caught regardless.
“Izuku ?”
He startles a little at the unexpected voice, not quite used to having people living in his head that don’t belong to him. This is the third user, he thinks. Kenzo, he had introduced himself as.
“Yeah?” he asks quietly, sealing the window shut behind him as he exits. He wipes the little bit of his boot print that had gotten tracked on the sill.
“ Why do you risk potentially losing a method of contact, even though you have no reason to believe that that child will ever return here?”
And Izuku… blanks. What?
Why… wouldn’t he?
“I don’t understand,” he says.
The third is quiet for a moment. “Y ou’ve already removed him from this home ,” he finally says at length. “ He will never see this note, but property managers or cleaners or the police may see it. They may follow it up, and prevent you from being able to access that method of communication again. Why risk it?”
“But that’s… that’s not really a risk. Right? I mean… Sure, I don’t think he’ll ever be here again. But sometimes things happen.” He is just. So genuinely confused. Is it a real question? Why ask something so obvious? A trick? Izuku is just… confused . “The case could get dropped, the dad could be released and granted custody again, the kid might run away and come here again in search of somewhere safe. He might need someone. And I can help, at least a little. So… Why would I ever prioritize one single way- something I could replicate, if not as easily as before- of contact, or locations? Even if they managed to get my identity through it, somehow. Why wouldn’t I?”
He listens to the heavy silence as his feet collide with the rooftops. He needs to work on being quieter while running, he notes absently. He adjusts his feet accordingly.
“ Izuku,” Kenzo says softly. It’s a different tone than his usual serious, distanced kind of voice that he had had last night. “ You are an amazing hero.”
Izuku stumbles.
“...I’m… I’m not a hero. I can’t be a hero.”
“...Titles change often, kid. Vigilantes to villains to heroes to career to vigilante, back and all over again and in any order. They change. They don’t… define who you are. What you do. No matter what people may label you, what you may be called. You are, without any doubt, a hero. Regardless of what you have been told. What you may have done or not done in the past. What you have said or thought. If you have a power or not. The law will not always encompass what is right. What should be, or what should be done. It will not always be right. But there are always people, heroic people, who will manage in spite of this, to help people. And you absolutely fit this description.”
He…
Izuku can’t quite breathe right.
He resumes his run after a staggering step forward. He ducks his head and stares at the ground below him. That’s…
It’s just.
Huh.
No one… No one had ever said anything like that to him before. Never once. Never anything close to that.
And, despite his greatest wish. Despite how he wants to believe that more than anything else in the world…
...Izuku can’t quite believe him.
-
" It's alright ," Nana urges, voice so horribly soft. Her strong arms stop him before he can finish tumbling to the ground. He stares blearily at the slow spirals of smoke that are rising from his arms, his hair.
" It's alright," the First echoes. He reaches forward, rests a cold hand against his cheek. " You've done so well, Izuku. It's alright. Rest, now."
Rest. He can't- no, that's not right, he can't rest, yet- there's still so much to do-
No-
" It's time to rest now, Izuku."
" You’re doing so well, little one, but you need to sleep for a little while."
It might be En, who Nana guides him to. He's passed ever so delicately to him, like he's made of glass-
Don't play rough with Izuku-kun, boys, you know how fragile his kind are-
- and big, warm hands hold him close, ground his body against the violent tremors that shake him.
" Rest. We will keep you safe."
"You've done so well. You're doing so good, kid. You can sleep now."
" It's alright. It's alright, Izuku. Rest. We've got you."
He tries , he tries to fight the fuzzy grey encroaching his vision, tries to stabilize the trembling in his limbs. He tries , he tries so hard. There's a heavy pit in his stomach and and fist around his heart when his mind slips and all he can feel is relief, when it feels like laying down in the sunlight after years of cold.
-
The new quirk, the Black Whip, is hard to control.
It is not quite difficult, or confusing. The super strength component had and still does give Izuku about a hundred times more trouble, both physically and mentally. But he understands the strength. Power up, distribute, act. Easy. Black whip is different. It comes easily when called, never far from his fingers. He has even, a couple of times, had to retract them when he hadn’t meant to activate the quirk. (He isn’t quite sure if that is normal, for new quirks. He can’t quite remember if Kacchan- Bakugou, Bakugou, not Kacchan- had ever struggled with it, and he’d certainly never had any other friends who may have talked about or acted out of control.)
The quirk obeys when he attempts to move it a certain way, mostly. He’s tried a variety of uses, having been training it in basically all of his free time the past few days. He can form a shield as simple as breathing, and has the same level of ease using it to, as its name suggests, whip. But then there are times like when he had tried swinging with it like a rope. It listens to his commands easily enough, shooting off the direction he wants when he wants, but it… falls short. Over half of the time, the strands shoot out just a little too short or far, a little too low. Like the quirk thinks he’s a different height then he is.
It’s hard to work around, because he has no idea how to fix it. He doesn’t even quite grasp what has caused it. His current working theory is residue from Daigoro transferred through One For All. It had been used to his size, his height, and moved accordingly. That also seems to imply a level of sentience through the quirk, though, which tends to be rather rare, and usually occurs in mutant type quirks.
He’s working on a fix.
(He can’t quite get it out of his head, is the thing. He’s had Black Whip for far less time than One For All. He’s literally in the wrong body to operate it. It has, at least to a certain degree, a mind of its own. Why is it, then, that it is still so much easier to control than One For All?)
-
Izuku is always so scared.
Scared. Little. Boy.
He’s scared when he’s four years old and has to have his momma explain to him in small words what quirkless actually means. He’s scared when his dad walks into his room, sits at the bed and stares at him for a few minutes in silence, before getting up and walking out of the door to never return. Scared when Kacchan first insults him, weak and small but brutal for a toddler. When he’d first stepped in front of another kid to stop them from being hurt, knowing he’d be next. (That one had been short lived. When he had realized he could hurt but save others the pain, even if they would never in a million years do the same for him, he had felt overjoyed. ) He’s scared when any of the kids use their quirks. When Kacchan looks at him.
When teachers stop treating him like glass after preschool, and ignore anything they might see. When the few teachers who hadn’t ignored him had come near him, when their hands slap the back of his head. When he’s sitting in class. When he’s called out for mumbling without realizing. When he’s called to answer in class. When he's called to stay after class.
Izuku is always scared.
He is scared when kids push him down stairs and lock him in rooms and beat him bloody and place spider lilies on his desk and write slurs across his forehead while they hold him down. He is scared when his mother finally sees his bruises and burns and cuts when he can’t quite hide them and they both pretend she hadn't. He is scared of Kacchan, still. Scared of anyone seeing or touching his belongings. Scared that one day the only thing anyone will remember of him is a statistic.
Scared of All Might. Scared of having his quirk taken away. (Just a little bit, he’s scared of the users in his head going away, too).
He is scared that despite everything, he could never imagine hurting or getting Kacchan in trouble. Could never in a thousand lifetimes consider doing something to make All Might pay for the harm he’s caused him, caused thousands of people and kids just like him.
Scared scared scared.
He wonders if one day he might be able to be brave, for once.
-
" Make sure you eat ," they urge everyday.
Izuku thinks that if he ate as much as they wanted him to, he'd either puke it all up or grow as tall as Yagi. Neither of them really appeal to him.
"I'm not hungry," he quietly reminds them. Most of his focus is on watching the various different windows of camera feeds open on his laptop. So far, the only thing he can see is the security guard playing solitaire on his phone.
" You never eat lunch, I'm not surprised you don't feel hungry. But you still should get some more calories."
"He's right, kid. Especially with how much you move an' work out. You gotta replenish that energy, or you're gonna burn out."
" I haven't eaten lunch regularly since I was like five, it’s okay." The top left screen had flickered, for just a moment. The middle follows soon after, and Izuku is already heading towards his window.
" ...you haven't eaten a third of what you're supposed to since you were a toddler?"
Izuku doesn't still, because he has places to be and violent robbers to stop, but there is a definite stall in his mental faculties. He… has? Yes. That is… factually correct. It just… sounds weird to say aloud, is all. That's it.
" Izuku, little one. Why don't you eat?"
This, he doesn't hesitate to answer, because he doesn't want to concern them. He has reasons, logical and healthy reasons, truly. "In elementary school, kids generally weren't really violent yet, but they still all wanted to show that they didn't like me. Or that they were better than me. Maybe both? But it was fun for them to mess with me. They put bugs in my food, or knocked it over, or threw it out and hid my bag. Or if I tried to eat school food, the teachers and staff didn't really like me either, so most of the time they wouldn't let me buy any. So it just built a habit, I guess. I'm used to it, though! I don't get hungry or tired or anything, anymore."
He's almost at the museum.
The quiet in his head feels like a hand on his chest, like the heavy silence of someone considering what to say. Nothing comes.
Izuku doesn't mind. No one has ever said the things he wanted to hear, anyway.
-
“We love you,” Yoichi says. He sounds panicked, like the words do not fit into his chest, and he needs to get them out. Like if by speaking them into the air, he can make them true.
Izuku shakes his head without knowing why.
Nana grips his shoulders, movements cautious but unrelenting. “We love you,” she urges.
"Why?" Izuku asks, baffled, before his mind catches up and realizes that that's probably not the right answer.
They look horribly sad, and Izuku feels guilty. He isn’t sure what he’s done.
“We love you,” says Kenzo, says Daigoro. Izuku shakes his head again.
“We love you, ” Itsuki says. “We love you,” Hikage says, En says.
“That’s-” but Izuku doesn’t have anywhere to go, doesn’t know what he could possibly say in response to that. What is there to say?
He wants to say it back. He does. He opens his mouth, he tries to force his vocal chords to operate, but-
But it doesn’t come.
He wants to say it back.
Why can’t he?
-
“Izuku,” they hiss, chiding and angry and tired and and and. Izuku is so tired of trying to figure out emotions from people’s voices. Why can no one ever just say what they mean?
His fingernails scratch his skin as he digs them under the bandage, as he peels it off.
“Izuku,” again, softer, sadder. More urgent, somehow still.
The IV is making his veins burn. Painkillers, maybe. The saline usually doesn’t hurt, the rare times he’s actually had to go to a hospital and be treated. He tugs it out. Pulls off the wires on his fingers, chest.
“ Izuku,” again. “ Little prince,” they hush, they murmur. “ Little star, darling boy.”
“Please stop,” he begs of them, voice weak and cracky. Please stop with the adoration and the lies and the We Love You and the worry and the fear and and and and and and an d a n d a n d-
He nearly trips once his feet struggle to support his weight, barely catches himself on the edge of the bed. His eyes ache and burn. He won’t cry. He won’t.
He moves again. The door is right there. No one will even need to see him as long as he moves quick enough, as long as he listens carefully enough to avoid footsteps and shuffling clothing.
He takes three steps before jolting to a stop.
Yoichi kneels in front of him.
...Izuku has never actually seen him before, but he Knows it further than he could reasonably claim. That is Yoichi, who looks pale and vaguely transparent in some places, but there, and-
“Izuku,” he says calmly, and the lack of emotion in his voice is so refreshing that it nearly makes Izuku lose control. He doesn’t care! He doesn’t care, which makes it so much easier to talk to him. “We- I need you to stop moving, okay?”
...Izuku has never done so well with being told what to do, despite everything. It makes him itch, makes him hurt, makes his chest tight. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like listening to people just to listen.
“Please move, Yoichi,” he says. His voice comes out more tired than he would have expected. “I need to go.”
“You’re safe, Izuku,” and they say his name so often, all of them, they say his name or nicknames that he can’t figure out are mocking or not-
“I’m not,” he says without meaning to.
“You are. Right now, you are safe. You don’t need to go anywhere. You don’t need to do anything except take some time to heal, to rest and recover.”
“I need to go.”
Yoichi looks pained. His hands reach out to hold Izuku’s shoulders, and he freezes in memory of no longer fond bursts of bright color and hot hot hot-
“ Izuku. Little star.”
“I need… I need to go. Please.”
Yoichi keeps holding him, and it’s so heavy despite the fact that Yoichi doesn’t even feel quite there, some indescribable half-weight half-pressure wave of cool temperature. “No one can hurt you right now. I won’t let anyone. None of us will let anyone come near you unless you want us to, okay? But leaving right now is only going to hurt you. You need to stay here for just a little while.”
“Yoichi-” he is going to cry.
“You’re injured,” the First continues, unwavering even as he looks terribly sad. Distantly, Izuku wonders why. “You’re being given antibiotics that you don’t have access to, that are keeping you safe. You’re being given painkillers to allow your body to focus on healing, to not put yourself under unnecessary stress. You’re being given nutrients to help your body regain energy and vitamins, you’re being given water to help keep you hydrated and healthy. You’re being kept to a bed so that you are less likely to pull the stitches keeping your organs held together, so that you don’t tear skin, so that you don’t shift the ribs that are still trying to meld back together.”
“Please stop,” Izuku says again, and his face is wet, because he doesn’t want to think about any of that-
“And we can keep you safe. We. Will. Keep. You. Safe, Izuku. Our little prince. You’re okay, we have you. We have you, Izuku. But you need to rest for us, okay? For you.”
“But I’m okay,” Izuku promises, urges, swears. He is, he is he is he is, he promises-
“You’re not,” Yoichi says, so horribly awfully gentle, and Izuku s h a t t e r s.
“I am,” he grits out through tears and the abrupt choking tightness of his throat. “I am, I promise,” he lies.
“You’re not,” Yoichi says again, and he pulls Izuku a little bit closer by his shoulders. “You aren’t, right now, and that’s okay, Izuku. You’re not okay, and you don’t need to be. You don’t need to be okay. You don’t.”
Izuku sobs and shakes and jerks against Yoichi’s chest as the man hugs him, heaving gasps that make him feel sick, that make his lungs burn for lack of oxygen as much as the aggravated ribs and wounds. “Please,” he whispers, breathless and begging. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for.
“It’s okay,” Yoichi soothes. He holds him close, holds him tight, doesn’t flinch away from Izuku’s everything. “It’s alright, our little prince. Our Izuku. It’s okay. We have you.”
-
Daigoro is soft.
He is huge and broad and must weigh thrice what Izuku does, and he is all hard muscle and rough edges. He is soft.
He is swaying so carefully, side to side, soothing and calming. Izuku just keeps his head pressed against his neck, lets the Fifth hold him like a baby, lets him rock him. He is warm and soft, and the wide hand across his back feels like a blanket pulled over his head, like being hidden away from all the things in the dark that might try and jump out. It is childish comfort. It is warmth in his soul that eats away and dissolves the edges of the bitterness and resignation and apathy he has held onto for so long. It is achingly gentle that digs under his ribs and squeezes his heart.
It hurts. It is relief. It is so, so soft soft soft .
Diagoro and Hikage are talking above him, quiet words hushed and smooth, some random conversation that Izuku can’t be bothered to pay attention to. He blinks his eyes open briefly, tilts his head up just once to check his surroundings. Nana looks over at the movement. She grins, sticks out her tongue and pulls a funny face.
Izuku, for a moment, feels so very young. He ducks his head, shoves his tired grin back into Daigoro.
He doesn’t quite have the energy for much else. His eyes don’t want to open again, and he can’t scrounge up enough spite to want them to. He leans into Daigoro, lets the wordless noise of them talking wash over him. Knows that the rest of his family is near, is right by him, is watching over him.
He rests.
-
“He is so young. ”
“He is.”
“...I had forgotten, I think.”
“Hm?”
“That there is such gentleness in the world.”
-
“He is filled with so much love. The world does not deserve him.”
-
“...Sometimes, I do not know if I can forgive Toshinori or not.”
“...He was the perfect choice. The ninth. There could not have been a better soul to give us to.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s the problem, I think.”
-
“You are doing so well, little prince.”
“I haven’t done anything. Nothing has- Nothing has changed. All For One is still out there, and I can’t find him. I can’t find Tomura. I can still barely use One For All.”
“...You know,” Itsuki starts, voice quiet. “I had One For All for almost thirteen years.”
Izuku startles. What?
“You are fifteen years old, Izuku. You have had One For All for less than one. If we are going to be basing success and accomplishment on the continuity of All For One… I don’t think any of us could be called ‘heroes.’”
“Don’t say that!” Izuku bristles, a rare anger beginning to brew in his stomach. He had almost thought it extinguished. “You guys are- that’s- that’s b- bullshit, and you know it! If you guys can’t be called heroes then who could?”
“But All For One is still walking. I could not kill or imprison him even with thirteen years of One For All; my own quirk; allies. Yoichi could not stop him even though All For One had never been weaker. Kenzo didn’t stop him.”
Something drops in Izuku’s stomach, and he feels vaguely like he had missed a step on the stairs. What?
“Hikage didn’t stop him. Daigoro didn’t stop him.”
“S-stop-” Izuku starts, and the only reason he doesn’t flinch at interrupting him is because he has not realized he did.
“En didn’t stop him. Nana didn’t stop him. Toshinori Yagi didn’t stop All For One.”
“S- stop it- that’s not what makes a hero! It’s not-”
“Well, why not? You said-”
“ No! Heroes are- Heroes help, they save. They’re not just, just tools to get rid of one bad thing, they’re not tools at all- Even if he has some- some obsession with a quirk, some generational grudge, it’s not-” and his words are so jumbled, and he feels so stupid and cannot even begin to string together an intelligent sentence, and god, it’s making him want to cry again- “It’s not your guys’ fault that he- and he- I don’t know, he cheated, he takes everything he wants, everything he sees as powerful, and takes and takes and takes, and uses whatever or whoever he- and he’s-” Izuku sobs. “It’s not fair! You shouldn’t have ever had to fight him! He shouldn’t have ever hurt you so badly. He shouldn’t-”
-have killed you.
Yoichi is in front of him again. He is teary eyed and has lips pressed tight, and that is all Izuku manages to see before he is being held to his chest, arms wrapped around him in a tight hug.
“You’re right, Izuku,” Yoichi says, voice gentle. “So. Why are you any different?”
“What?” Izuku asks, dumbly. It is not played ignorance, or active denial. It is just… confusion.
"You feel such injustice for us," Yoichi explains so softly. "I am sorry that you have been so hurt as to forget you are just as human as us. That you deserve everything we do and more."
Before Izuku can even begin processing and arguing against that, Itsuki steps forward again. “You’re right,” the Second says. “About a lot of things. Heroes aren’t a tool. They aren’t a means to an end. It never was our purpose to get rid of All For One. It was never why we were given One For All.”
“I don’t- I don’t understand,” Izuku says, brokenly. He feels sick again.
“Do you think we were only fit to be called heroes while we were fighting All For One?”
“ No- ”
“Are you only a hero when you are fighting All For One?”
“I don’t- I don’t understand .”
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair, Izuku. You’re right. It is really, really not fair.” Third has moved forward at some point, has a hand splayed across his shoulder blades between Yoichi’s still-hugging arms. “It isn’t fair, and that is a perfectly acceptable complaint. You’re right. You’re right, and it’s awful, and it’s not a childish wish that things were different.”
“It’s not fair,” Hikage says, “how you were treated. It’s not fair that you were treated as less because of bias and prejudice, that you were pushed and broken and hurt so deeply. It is not fair that you are filled with such love and kindness and joy, and that the world has tried so hard to crush it out of you.”
Daigoro ruffles Izuku’s hair, careful. “We get it, kiddo. We get it. It’s not fair. Not any of it. Not All For One. Not his grudge. Not the responsibilities placed on each of us. Not how you were treated, not how they made you think about yourself. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right. You are not expendable. You are not less. Your worth is not and has never been conditional. It is not dependent on succeeding or accomplishment, and it never will be.”
En stands off to the side by Itsuki, just a calming presence. Izuku barely notices, the little focus he can manage through suppressing sobs focused on their words. “You are,” he says, words so very careful, so deliberate. “The absolute best of us, Izuku Midoriya. And that will not ever change, no matter what happens. We do not care if you stop All For One tomorrow or in a decade, if you decide to avoid him for the rest of your life and spend it living, if you don’t want to fight him. We love you. We love you, Izuku. That is unconditional.”
“If I had it my way,” Nana says, voice soft with emotion she usually does not allow to show. She sounds shaky. “You would never have to lay eyes on that man. You would never have known he existed. Frankly, I think we’d all prefer it if you would just… forget. Leave it be. Ignore it and live and do what you already are. Helping. Saving. You are a hero. But you are our little star, Izuku, the best of us . The brightest. So, we already know. You would never let him be, when you knew, and could do something about it, would you?”
“He’s hurting people,” Izuku manages to choke out. He doesn’t know how he manages the coherency to say it, or if they even understand the words.
“He is,” Yoichi says, nods. “He is, and you are so good. So he is going to try and hurt you, too. And he has had so many years to build strength, to collect quirks and allies and supplies and power. He is so very strong. And, yes,” and he sounds so impossibly sad when he continues, “he killed us. Each and every one of us. And he is going to try and kill you.”
“I know,” Izuku says. Tries to say.
“I am so sorry that it has fallen onto you, the grudge attached to this quirk. It is not your responsibility. It was never any of ours. You should not have to fight him, to evade him, to know him. And, I wish we could convince you otherwise. I wish you would let us keep you safe, convince you to stay away from him and never look his way. I know we cannot. So, for now. For now, our little prince. I need you to remember that no matter what, we will always love you.”
-
We are so proud of you.
You shouldn’t be.
-
Yoichi scoops him up, and maybe it says something about Izuku’s stature that even the thinnest, least built holder can easily carry him around.
Well, you know he's quirkless. They're fragile , remember? Be careful with him, kids, Izuku isn't as big and strong as you-
"Why do you guys keep holding me?" Izuku asks, because he has never been good at keeping himself from asking questions that are going to hurt him.
Yoichi looks down at him, gives him a terribly sad looking smile. "I'm not sure," he says lightly. "It's just a form of affection we all share, I suppose. Do you know, my older brother used to carry me everywhere when we were little?"
"Really?"
"Mhm."
Form of affection.
It's such a simple concept, and it seems so far removed from anything Izuku understands. It's not to make fun of him, he is almost certain. At the least, he is sure enough that he can nearly always push that particular worry away before it takes root. Perhaps it is just that the holders are all so strange .
-
He snarls.
He fights, swings heavy limbs as hard as he can to pull away, throws his head back and forth, gnashes teeth and kicks and screams and fights.
He doesn’t want to be here anymore.
Yoichi and Hikage are standing in front of him, several feet away, out of punching and kicking and headbutting range. Nana is not so lucky.
She has him in a secure hold, held tight and firm with no room for affection. Izuku thinks, far away and pushed behind any rationality, that he might have broken her nose. At the least, her legs are going to be black and blue.
“ Izuku,” someone is yelling, desperate. He can’t hear them. He doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to he doesn’t want to-
“ Izuku, ” pleading and broken and horrified. Izuku tears his lip open, deep and harsh, in his own bite.
“ No!” He screeches.
Someone- Hikage, maybe- steps in front of him. Izuku lets out another wordless, nameless scream, as loud and angry as he can make it.
There are broken words around him. Just snippets, half-syllables that Izuku doesn’t have the time or energy to try and decipher.
His arms are thoroughly pinned by Nana’s hold, but someone else must be trapping his hands down now, too, because when he tries to dig nails further into his own palms it doesn’t work, he doesn’t even move.
“ NO! NO NO NO!” he screams.
“ He’s -”
“ -elp-”
“-opsital?”
“No, definit-”
“-urt himse-”
“ Please ,” he begs, because his muscles are starting to give in, starting to tremble too aggressively for him to continue fighting. His vision is so blurry he cannot decipher anything more than vague colors, and it takes too long to realize it is because he is crying. He suddenly becomes very aware of the choking sensation filling his throat and chest.
“ -iously-”
“-no help-”
“-thrashing li-”
“-then?”
“- someone-”
“Izuku.”
He opens his eyes.
“Hello, darling,” Itsuki says. He is holding Izuku’s cheeks between his hands. Izuku sobs. “I need you to do something for me. Okay?”
No no no no NO NO NO!
“ Izuku,” Itsuki says again, firmly, evenly. Izuku looks back to him, and wants to scream again. Wants to scream until he can finally breathe, until he can think-
“I need your help.”
What?
“I need your help, Izuku. Will you help me?”
Itsuki seems to be waiting for a response, but it takes so long for Izuku to process the words that he thinks it would be better not to answer. He just stares at the second holder, eyes wide and red. He doesn’t feel well, Izuku thinks. Eventually, he forgets what he had asked before he decides whether or not to speak up.
“...W-what… what did you…?”
He can’t manage more words than that, thinks it a minor miracle he had managed to say anything at all. Itsuki tilts his head forward just a bit, moves until he can press their foreheads together.
“I need your help,” he repeats calmly. “Will you help me?”
Izuku nods. It makes him dizzy and unsure of his footing, like he’s about to fall, and it takes too long to remember that the reason he can’t feel the ground is because Nana is still holding him about a foot above it. He stops nodding.
“Okay. Thank you, Izuku. Are you ready?”
He nods again. Stops more quickly, this time. He doesn’t feel very well.
“Alright. First step, okay? I need you to help me find something. I’m not sure where it is, but I could really use your first aid kit. Can you show me where it is?”
Something is… wrong. Something about that is wrong, Izuku is almost sure. A part of him very very much wants to give into that mistrust, because that distrust has kept him safe for so long , but-
But?
…Why but ? Why is this different?
These are the other holders. These are- this is Itsuki asking. Izuku trusts Itsuki? No, no, don’t trust anyone, don’t trust anyone, especially don’t trust adults-
But it’s Itsuki. Itsuki is one of the holders, and the holders-
…
?
“Okay,” Izuku whispers.
-
Nana is slow and so very careful as she lowers Izuku back to his own feet. Hikage gently lets go of his hands, flexes his own fingers to nudge Izuku’s away from his own palms.
He looks lost, terrified and confused and hurt. At the least, he is not thrashing like a feral and cornered animal anymore, not screaming and screeching and doing anything he can to leave.
He’s flushed and shaking and exhausted and so very tired. He’s sick and overheated, borderline delirious.
He is so very very determined to help people, and Yoichi would almost feel bad at them blatantly manipulating him if it weren’t the only thing keeping him from biting off his own tongue or tearing muscles or burning alive in his own skull.
“Okay,” Izuku whispers, voice hoarse from screaming. Itsuki nods back at him, so mindful to keep any emotions off his face. Izuku wonders, about emotions. Wonders what might be motivating them, how much of it is faked, why they’re acting, if the displays are true or not, wonders what he could possibly do to help while not making things worse because emotions are so complicated-
So Itsuki keeps his face plain and bored and easy. And Izuku listens.
He takes short steps, unstable under weak knees further strained by frantic kicking. He gets barely three feet away before stopping, confused and blearly. Slowly, he looks back over to Itsuki, who does nothing. After a moment, Itsuki reaches out a hand. Izuku stares. Timidly takes his hand, wraps his smaller fingers around Itsuki’s. Starts walking again, towards the bathroom.
They all know where his first aid kit is. He uses it far too much for them to have ever forgotten.
Izuku’s too feverish to recall this. Instead, he just leads Itsuki there with quiet determination despite everything because he was asked for help.
Goddamn this world and everything in it for treating Izuku the way they have.
Yoichi collapses backwards. He doesn’t fight it, just lays limply on the floor and allows himself a moment of tremendous bitterness. Nana lets out a humorless chuckle, sounding choked up. She joins him on the floor. Hikage does as well. Eventually, all of them minus Itsuki just… crumble onto the floor. Lean on each other for any comfort or faith they can.
-
Izuku’s hands tremble so harshly that he nearly drops his med-kit when he hands it to Itsuki.
He leans against the bathroom counter for stability his own legs aren’t giving. He makes a concerned little face, tense and hurt.
“Are you… Are you hurt?”
Itsuki shakes his head. He rummages through it, digs under the often-used-often-replaced gauze and suture kits until he finds a thermometer. He pulls the cap off, and before Izuku is even capable of being confused, presses it under his tongue.
“Keep that there,” Itsuki says evenly. “Just for a minute, and then you can take it out, alright?”
Izuku gazes at him, tired and bleary. He doesn’t fight.
They wait sixty seconds.
The thermometer beeps.
Itsuki reads the number, and sighs. Sighs very deeply.
Just below the threshold they had agreed on. No hospital for now.
He isn’t sure if that’s better or worse.
-
Aren't you tired, Izuku?
What right do I have to be tired?