Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

1-A are very much used to chaotic, vaguely inexplicable things happening, doubly so in relation to their resident Sunshine. (In private, they call him their Supernova, but Izuku doesn't need to know that.)

Something happens. There is darkness and light and being rent apart, taut-spun together, something in the edges of his soul fraying, the very bones of him seeming to warp, and Izuku loses everything except for how loud his own river-rushing blood is.

He’s standing up. Staggering, sure, but still on his feet, even with how his entire body aches, visceral and marrow-deep, and there are so many things registering as wrong with his body, One For All disjointed, his organs doing something bizarre, ivy and ash filling his chest. And he can barely even breathe, but he can get out all of three words:

"What the fuck?"

Several people blink at him, and Izuku doesn't even try to breathe around his utter confusion-fear-loss,

"Deku-kun?"  He doesn't reply, can't, because his body feels wrong, feels full of stars and shadows and he can feel every atom of air against his skin (he's no longer in a twisting vacuum of nothing-), every choking breath in his throat far too tight, far too expansive, and he can feel the eight hearts around his own pounding double-time, sheer panic and agony, blood and sparks and shadows writhing just beneath his skin, bulging at his freckles.

Izuku has just been torn apart, yet stayed whole this entire time, and now he is standing in the middle of a very familiar landscape, in amongst very familiar faces, in a place that hasn't existed for seven years.

He’s at UA, at one of the training facilities, and he can’t even remember the name of it (it’s not the USJ, that’s for damn sure-) but he recognises it well enough. Ochaco’s hair is still a shoulder-length bob, and some of Class B are here so- So, okay, shit, this is one of their joint exercises from first year, somehow, but then the question comes with whether this is a memory, an illusion, or some sort of actual travel, be it time and-or dimension. Well logically it should be at least time, given everyone’s ages, and there are far more time-based Quirks than space, in terms of changes or travel, that Izuku is aware of-

He slides half a step back, Whip rising up to coil around him like a capture weapon, and has to blink twice. His vision isn’t quite right. It’s fine. Not quite right, but fine; it’s workable. At least Danger Sense will keep him mostly aware.

Although, that being said, it can't cover everything, particularly the presence of several of his class, looking fifteen again, staring at him. He- This can't be safe.

~~~

The class blink nigh-on in sync with each other. Because Izuku is balancing on the balls of his feet, stance ready, blatantly ready to attack, but that isn't really notable in comparison to, well, everything else.

He darted three steps backwards when Uraraka even began to approach, which was slightly odd in and of itself, but it's everything else that seems the most off. 

Something is wrong, is different, but is also absolutely entrancing, and those he was fighting with and against can only stare, much like those watching over the cameras. The sight is beyond startling, completely inexplicable. One moment Izuku was fighting, about to flick out a blast of air pressure, and there were these whips, this outburst of power, fierce and bold and reaching for the sky, for the sun in dark, rampant supplication. And those elsewhere in the cityscape came running, because they didn't even recognise that Quirk, that power, and it could be villains-

It is Izuku. Because that outburst grows, swells, surges into a bulging rush of shadows until Izuku cannot be seen, until they are staring into a void, dragged a step forward, then a second. A third.

And it collapses into itself, leaving a figure behind who floats above the ground for a few too many half-breaths. Then Izuku finally stands upon the ground once more, and opens his eyes, and oh. Oh, that is not how it used to be. (That is not natural, yet it is beautiful. It is ethereal, and wrong, and something beyond holy.

It- He is a god, a deity of star-stuff and shadows, of blood and hope and so much more. It is Izuku, as none of them have known him.

Except they have-will-neveragain.)

"Deku-kun?"  It is Uraraka who speaks up first, daring to step forwards, to reach out, because Izuku might not look like his usual self, but it is quite clearly still Izuku, to her mind, and if something is going on then they should be there for him. The way he moves back from here isn't right. Not at all. Nor is his blatant confusion, the defensiveness, the uncertainty.

"I- Och- Uraraka-chan, could you get Sensei?"  His voice is wrong, rasping, raw-edged as though a single incorrect syllable will tear it apart from the spine outwards, but the words are there all the same, even if Izuku doesn't so much as blink at them all.

"We can get Aizawa-sensei, Midoriya. Come on," Shoda calls to his classmates, and whilst Monoma looks like he's about to fight against the other boy's suggestion for a long second, a glance back at Izuku has the blond shaking his head, scoffing just a little, before all of the 1-B class members they were fighting promptly disappear, clearly heading back towards the observation area.

Izuku breathes in once, twice, a third time. And he settles, in his mind, in his heart, a hand upon the writhing, uprising shadows within himself, the ones that are trying to protect him, to protect his friends, except he doesn't think that it needs doing right now. Because this is either a memory or hallucination that he's trapped in, or it's a reality of sorts, a genuine time and space with real people that he cannot risk hurting because these are his family, his class-friends-allies, and the thought of hurting them out of any sort of choice-

"Are you-" His voice shatters, right down the centre, and he chokes upon his syllables, ink and iron upon his tongue, Black Whip curling up, coiling around, trying to soothe him, pressing upon his back and rhythmically squeezing his arms and somehow it's enough to make him try again, even if he can't look Ochaco in the eyes,

"Are you okay? Is anyone hurt?"

"We're all fine, Deku-kun. It's you we're worried about."

("Deku-kun, you're our SuperDekIzukFaVa-" 

he has been so many things, and none of them ever enough

"Deku-kun, you're our hero. But you don't have to be strong all the time. Let us help you too, kay?"

"Only if you guys are alright first."

"We are, Midobro, don't you worry about us!"

"Yes, we just wish you to be well in equal measure.")

Izuku slides into a position a little less defensive, a little less ready, keeping that steady internal hand upon his companion-hearts, glad to feel them subsiding at least a bit.

"I- Sorry. I didn't mean to worry you. I'm fine."

"Fine is a very relative term, Problem Child."  Izuku doesn't startle at their Sensei's arrival, because he's well-used to Shouta's gait and presence by now. No, he finds his shoulders relaxing slightly against his own will, even as Whip refuses to fully calm down. He's grateful that, no matter how used to its effects he is by now, the hero doesn't use Erasure on him. (They should all be heroes - they are all heroes, in Izuku's understanding of the world, as of only hours ago, and no matter how little that name meant to many people any more-)

"I'm not about to lose control, I don't think," he amends, because to his own mind that's the priority, and Sensei doesn't seem to mind him sharing that, judging by the sharp nod and the slightly softer gaze.

"Right. Do you need any medical attention, kids?"

"No injuries. Disoriented," Izuku reports, terse through learnt necessity. Oh, well, perhaps it wasn't necessary, judging by the slightly askance glances it earns him. But nobody says anything, other than to confirm that they're also fine. Izuku can at least be glad for that fact, if nothing else.

"Alright. Get changed, hellspawn. And, Problem Child," he tacks on, turning fully to Izuku once more,
"Come and meet us at Nedzu's office after, alright? Nobody's in trouble, but this needs discussing, I believe."

"Sure, Sensei. That- Yeh, that's fine," Izuku manages, trying to shrug off his nerves and discomfort as much as possible. Falling back into a mid-battle mindset, or staying in it, perhaps more accurately, doesn't appear likely to do him any good here. He needs to try for personable strategy rather than guerrilla or defensive warfare.

Fuck, he's gotten so messed up, hasn't he?

"C'mon Deku-kun, let's go get changed!" Ocha- Uraraka, despite her enthusiastic words, does not reach out to grab him like she usually might, although equally she stays close to him, smiling without hesitation, eyes full of concern and brightness all at once. He doesn't reach out for her in return, not wanting Whip to register the half-familiar touch as a threat, however he does find himself smiling a little in return,

"Sure." 

He finds that they're behind most of the class, on their way back to the changing rooms, but he finds it hard to honestly care when he's so busy having to fight away the thoughts of what happened here, in another time or life or reality. (He remembers the sight of an entire dismembered limb, an arm with bandages, ironically, wrapped around the wrist, a past injury now redundant, blood congealing in the gaps between the paving stones. He remembers sobbing over the bodies of a small civilians family who had sought sanctuary and who he had watched, from far too great of a distance to be useful, another civilian's light-spearing Quirk faster than Izuku could ever hope to move, with his Quirk enhancements and support gear or not-)

And not even quarter of an hour later, Izuku steps out of the changing room to find his entire class waiting for him, albeit none of them are facing him.

Seeing them all, like this, alive and young and okay, is somewhere between terrifying and miraculous. (It is more than overwhelming enough that his companion-hearts rise up within him, a tidal surge of something blood-warm, panic-hope-grief laden, and it has Whip lurching into motion, into coiling defence, his sparks skittering upon his skin, all spiders and lightning-)

The class turn back to him, at some point. From how their expressions shift, from Dark Shadow's quiet crow to the furrow of Tenya- Iida's brows, he is not what they were expecting to see. (Izuku, he thinks, might just be falling into the edges of the monster he long-since has feared he would become, found in the darkening of his fingers, the burgeoning reminder of a Nomu, and all he knows is all that's wrong-)

"Midoriya?"

"Uhm- Fuck, hi."  Well, he messed that up. Lovely to know that, when pushed back into an arguably-normal social situation, he's still an absolute disaster. Wonderful, really.

"I'd say that sounded like Bakugou, but it really wasn't vehement enough," Jirou snorts, and there's enough laughter at that for Izuku to feel a little bit more comfortable again. Hopefully he isn't being too weird. Or, well, not out of place enough for his class to distrust him on sight, at least, which Izuku will take and run with it.

("...Momo?"  She startles a little, turning around to face him with a smooth, just-smiling expression,

"Yes, Izuku-kun?"

"Are you alright?"

"Quite, of course. Where did Satou-kun go?"  Oh. Something is wrong, something is very, very wrong, and Izuku thinks he might know what it is.

"I... I think he might have ended up going next door. And, actually, I wanted to talk to him too, so I'll come with you."

"Oh! Okay!"

Stabbing one of his closest friends in the back is awful, but Izuku knows who it truly is, and they've lost several civilians to her, not to mention Aoyama, because he was vulnerable and Toga takes a fucking sadistic pleasure from infiltrating camps and taking out whoever she can, picking off those who she deems most accessible or destructive-

He does not hold her whilst she dies, even whilst she breathes her final breath with a begging sob, an edge of her face still one of his best friend's... Call it pity, call it weakness, call it justice, but he does hold her hand, wax-molten though it is, half-transformed. The closest she ever got to having him was in death, and he thinks himself vicious, now, but he hopes never to be cruel.)

But his class do not press, do not push, do not pressure. They look at him, they take in how he has morphed into shadows and eight-fold figures blurring at his edges, and they are giving him time. Giving him space. 

"You guys didn't have to wait for me," Izuku offers, genuinely a little bit sheepish, even as he once more tries to tamp down on how he can feel his heels threatening to lift off of the ground, Whip curling closer back to his arms, more akin to tattoos than a writhing capture weapon.

"We wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Yeh, you're kinda looking a bit different there, Mido-bro. Manly! But different," Kirishima laughs, even more sheepish than Izuku was. It's enough to have Izuku himself smiling a little though.

"Uhm, about that, I don't know why it's happened."  Which, well, is true. He feels like it probably has something to do with the likely time travel, but, well, he really isn't sure. It feels like it should be more obvious (he was rent apart, torn along the seams of his scars, ribs pulled back by nothing but the now-then-never of his very existence-) but he has no certainty in this, no assurance of what this world is, or what it may bring, what his form in it may mean. Although, saying that, if he looks different to how he did previously here, it implies that this isn't simply a different dimension version of him or anything. Which, well-

"Midoriya-kun, would you like any of us to accompany you to Principal Nedzu's office?"

"Uhm, I should be fine, thank you, unless any of you have anything to do over there?"  He wants to give them the option, both for the sake of appeasing their possible fears, and trying to ease any suspicion. Izuku doesn't want to put any stress on them. Not any more than he already has, at least, with the whole complicated jumble of a Quirk-explosion thing and the changed appearance. And, actually, he didn't used to swear out loud, did he? Not until maybe second or third year, and this has to be first year, judging by several hairstyles and some of the hero uniforms from before they all went to get changed again.

But none of them take him up on that offer, and so they part ways only two corridor-corners later, several of the class telling him to be careful and they'll be making katsudon for dinner, kay Midoriya? He thanks them, very genuinely so, has to fight down the overwhelming emotions that threaten to overtake him entirely, before wandering off.

If he has to collapse against a wall a few corridors before Nedzu's office, one that doesn't get used much, knees weak enough that he slumps halfway down to the floor, and just breathe for a few long moments, the past users helping him to crush down the worst of the emotions, their hands kind upon his shoulders, their Quirks flaring warmth against his breastbone that is far less sickly than the over-fierce heat in his guts and that eases some of the spider-spun chill along his spine. Izuku is surrounded by Whip, Smokescreen faint in his nose, just enough to keep him present. He keeps breathing, following the rhythm of the words in the back of his mind, the ghosts that have followed him through time and space helping him even now.

Izuku blinks, and he's on his feet once more. His breathing is a little bit disjointed still, admittedly, but he has a job to do, a fight to win-

Shit. He just needs to chill the fuck out, really, doesn't he? He's in the past, or something (everyone is alive, good and bad and in between, except they're not his, but what if this isn't the past at all? what if it's just an illusion or a nightmare or-) and now he has to try and convince his teachers that he isn't some sort of villain or imposter or just generally bad person. Kami, he could get locked up or something, at this rate, he's clearly a bit fucked up in various ways right now.

"Problem Child." The acknowledgement-slash-greeting startles him a little, and Izuku jerks his head up to look at his homeroom teacher (Shouta, Sensei, friend and ally and mentor to them all-) who is poking his head around the Principal's door, a single eyebrow partially raised.

"Sensei," he returns, refusing to let himself hesitate as he comes up to the doorway.

(He does not truly know it, but the way he looks, then, is... off-putting.

Because his steps are a little too long, a little bit too fluid. His fingers, tangling together, are still scarred, except the valleys are things of shadows, his fingertips tinted grey-black, covered in a deep graphite smudge except it's the very skin itself, blackened by something like stress or the very fraying of a being-

It is the eyes, above all else, that are disconcerting. Because Midoriya has always been oh-so emotive, and his eyes were not the only part of that, but they were certainly a factor, and now... Now there is something emotive to them, still, but it is different. It is dread pooling against the base of Aizawa's spine, and hope fledging within his heart, and something just the tiniest bit disconcerting that feels wrong over all. Logically, some of that must just be the difference between their usual Midoriya and the one facing him now, but that isn't really enough to explain the itch at the back of his neck, the iron tang at the back of his throat.

But, ultimately, this is still his Problem Child, as much as Aizawa can tell. His absolutely bizarre Quirk, however, seems like it's done something bizarre once again, and perhaps not entirely favourably. The kid seems a bit off. He seems jumpy, or uncomfortable, or even just outright not himself, in some sort of way, but Aizawa is comfortable enough with him, with the way he interacted with the class, to think that he truly is Midoriya, he just isn't quite right either.

Aizawa is worried, he finds.)

"Ah, Midoriya-kun, welcome!"

"My boy, hello!"

"Hi, All Might-sensei, Nedzu-san. Principal," he tacks on, a little too hurried to do so, because he really isn't used to calling the hybrid anything other than his actual name, but this seems odd, now. But he doesn't want to be rude. Particularly not when these people probably don't trust him, or at least watching out for signs of if they shouldn't. Dammit, this is already more complicated than he thinks he can deal with.  (He was in the middle of a fight only an hour ago, civilians to protect and militia to fight, blood on his hands and his family fighting at his side-)

Three ghosts are surrounding him, given flesh and form, yet Izuku cannot simply stop grieving them.

"Now then, Midoriya-kun, can you provide any insight into what occurred?"  Izuku blinks a little heavily, drags in a deep breath, and realises that he has to make a decision, right now.

He can go this alone, come up with an easy lie of his Quirk spontaneously evolving, he can go with some sort of halfway truth along that line, or he can tell the truth. All of the options will require him to convince his once-mentors (again-mentors?) that he is telling the truth, that he really is Midoriya Izuku. (He has learnt, time and again, that having allies makes fights easier, gives him protection and support on strategies and back-up when things go wrong. But having someone at his side puts them in danger, too. He is not the only one at risk, then.

But keeping secrets has led to a lot of the issues in his life. If more people had known certain things sooner, they would have been able to better protect both themselves and others. Sometimes secrets are for the better, but sometimes, sometimes, it makes things so much worse.)

"I- Fuck, right, I could be wrong about this, but I think I have, at the very least, time travelled. From the future, into the past, that is."

There is, understandably, a fair period of silence following that. Izuku doesn't blame any of his mentors, not himself, frankly, because he is currently kind of panicked too. This is beyond difficult to process, right now. (The people he has loved for... for nearly a decade are gone, as he knew them. And being here, he will surely have already changed them even a little bit, if this truly is a single, linear timeline.

He cannot afford to grieve them, not yet. Not until he is sure what has happened, what the true reality is, whether his family are gone or if they're as okay as they ever could be-)

It is Nedzu who speaks first, rather predictably, beady eyes gleaming in a way that Izuku has genuinely missed.

"Just to check, you are Midoriya still, yes?"  Well, that's a fair question,

"Yes. Midoriya Izuku, born on the fifteenth of July, twenty-thirty three. But this isn't how I looked at fifteen."  Shouta snorts, quiet and dry,

"Well, it isn't how Midoriya looked two hours ago, either."  The lack of something like 'our' feels reassuring there, somehow. Like Sensei isn't separating Izuku from his past-self entirely. Like he might actually believe him and his crazy tale. Not to mention that Sensei's dry tone, as always, manages to be at least a little bit amusing.

"I- From how it felt, I think- I think the travel fucked something up. Or lots of somethings." Once more, there are several breaths of silence, Nedzu's paws coming up to steeple beneath his snout, blatantly contemplative. Shouta is the one who actually responds though,

"I feel like I should be scolding you for swearing."  That startles a laugh out of Izuku, admittedly, an edge of hysterical gasping to it, even as he gets out a rather messy response,

"Yeh, Sensei gave up on that for us when we hit maybe twenty?"

"I... Okay. Sure. There are more important things to be worrying about now," the man adds on, only a little wry.

"There really are," Toshinori adds on, still that little bit too pale.

Nedzu seems to take their less-serious chatter as an indication that they're prepared to return to a rather more serious topics, and leans further forwards, paws shifting to instead press to his desk. The lack of tea suddenly hits Izuku, and he's abruptly aware of just how seriously the Principal is taking this.

"So, it stands to reasonable belief that the travel, most likely time-based at the very least, has affected your physicality. Does your memory feel affected at all? Your cognisance?"  Well, that's actually a pretty good question, Izuku realises, taking a moment to breathe deeply, to see if he can think of anything that feels particularly off. But he certainly remembers more than enough about what has happened, what occurred right before, to his knowledge, he arrived here, and the years leading up to that:

"Beyond general disorientation, no. I know my name, my age, I was able to logic out where I had turned up to reasonable accuracy, I could tell you a little bit too much about what happened to me. To all of us."  Nedzu dips his head slightly in acknowledgement, still blatantly contemplative, a hundred thoughts racing through his mind in any given moment. It's an uncomfortably familiar sight. 

"That's something good, at least," Shouta comments under his breath, blatantly taking what he can get. Which is an understandable practice, to Izuku's mind,

"I mean, I'd take forgetting some things, Sh- Sensei, but overall, yes."

There's an odd moment then, where the three men stare at him with something like realisation in their eyes, and perhaps five or six years ago Izuku would have faltered or even quailed beneath it, but here and now, with nearly a decade of fighting to speak of, he understands the light to their gazes. Sometimes things don't sink in right away.

And he's very much not the same child he was at fifteen, for better and worse and everything in between.

(Izuku can still feel the adrenaline rushing through him; Mina and Momo were fighting beside him, they had rescued those two men who had been trapped by the mob, but then that woman had arrived, and he hadn't been able to see what happened to Mezou. He can still taste the iron against his throat, can still feel the thrum of Danger Sense, the fierce heat of his sparks that he can suppress but wasn't, when they didn't need stealth, and is sure that something is still wrong-)

"Well then!" Nedzu chirps, after the silence has hung for just a little too long,
"I believe it would be prudent to have Recovery Girl look you over, if you would be willing, and to send you back to your class for the time being, yes?"

"I- I'm happy with that, although I would prefer if the check-up waited, maybe? And can I have permission to go and hide in the woods or something if things, well, get to be a bit much?"  Izuku feels kind of stupid for making the request, but he's already finding just being with three of his mentors pretty overwhelming. His entire class (all alive, all okay-) would surely be even worse. Oh, don't get Izuku wrong, it will also be an absolute ecstasy to see them all alive again, full of hope and joy and sheer life, but it's also so foreign. They aren't his family as he last knew them.

Either way, Nedzu has already rapped his paw pads atop the desk, and nods,

"That is agreeable, and you certainly can. Feel free to make yourself at home in the teachers' dorms too, or within some of the rooms within the school itself when it's open. Where possible, simply alert one of us where you will be going, if you're amenable?"  Izuku doesn't hesitate to nod in return,

"Of course, Nedzu-sensei."

"Thank you, Midoriya-kun. Please, do be assured that we are going to do everything we can for you!"

"Thank you," he presses, wanting it to be clear that he really is very much grateful. It's a fucking impossible situation to be in, for all of them. The fact that his teachers are even giving him some trust (he knows, realistically, that he's going to be monitored, but he has no complaints about that, no, he would rather see evidence of their caution within that-) means a lot.

"Let me walk you out," Toshinori offers, already pushing to his feet. Izuku doesn't much enjoy the other man looming over him on an instinctual basis, but it's Toshinori, and Izuku is currently shorter than he's used to being, so he pushes that almost-panic down, grateful for the helping hands that settle against his ribs and heart to keep him mostly calm from the inside-out.

"Thank you, Toshinori-san."  He nods his farewells to Nedzu and Shouta, and follows the blond out of the Principal's office.

They're several corridors back towards the entrance of the main school building by the time Toshinori speaks, rubbing at the back of his neck, posture hunched as always, but his eyes are kind,

"Are you truly alright, my boy?"  Izuku manages a rather wan smile together,

"I'm not amazing, Toshinori-san, but I'm okay."

They fall into awkward silence then, although, to be fair,  it isn't entirely awkward. Izuku is trying to allow himself to simply appreciate the presence of his mentor, trying to ignore the unnaturalness and grief.

"I- I assume that these extra powers are to do with the past users? Do you know how or why that works?" The question startles Izuku a little, giving him no room for reverie, but at least he can re-focus on facts, on something that is not entirely as personal, that doesn't set his voice to wavering,

"Somewhere in the line of Quirk Singularity, my being Quirkless, and just the sheer amount of stress that the Quirk and I have been put under over the years, as far as we could tell. I have all of our Quirks."

"Oh."  Toshinori admittedly sounds a little dumbfounded, and Izuku very much doesn't blame him. He remembers feeling the same.
"Is there anything I can do, Izuku-kun? Anything you need?"

Izuku pauses in his stride, not quite daring to reach up and settle a hand on his mentor's arm as he once would have, instead offering a ragged-edged smile and rising a hand slightly, Whip coiling into a precise spiral above his palm, his entire body rising off of the pavement slightly, just enough for Izuku's eye level to be above Toshinori's shoulders,

"We're alright, Toshinori-san. They help me, including with our Quirks."

"Ah. I'm glad," the man returns, soft and relieved and genuine. Izuku's heart is warm and twisted all at once.

He has missed so many of his family members so viscerally. Having them back is... It's bittersweet, and uncertain. It surely won't last, in some way or another.

The moment isn't helped because they round a corner on their path, and in front of them is Heights Alliance in its full glory. The dorms are- They are both a welcome sight, and a terrifying one (the blood that was spilled here, the atrocity committed-) all in one, enough so that he has to drag several deeper breaths in, not allowing himself to miss a step. His forced composure doesn't stop Whip from slipping up from his arms, unspooling slightly to wrap lightly around his chest. The glimpse of his fingers (scarred, but with a notable grey tinge rather than their should-be trembles-) doesn't honestly help, but it's fine.

It's fine. Everything is. Izuku is just a casual eight or nine years in the past, in his mostly-fifteen year old body, about to face his family, no less than three of whom have died in his arms.

Well, no time other than the present, right? Irony aside. Supernova is no coward.

Chapter Text

Several of the class - most of them in fact - are in the common room when Izuku walks in. Seeing them all, young and alive and turning to face him with worry, smiles, curiosity, is... It is beyond disconcerting. (Something in the very depths of Izuku, too far even for the vestiges to smother is, is screaming. It is screaming, visceral and angry and mourning, because this is his family except it never will be again, not in the same way, not for the same reasons. And yet here are fourteen ghosts, staring right back at him. Oh, how he mourns.)

"Hi, Mido-chan, kero."  Izuku smiles at Tsuyu, because how could he not, but it's a strained thing. Twisted, perhaps. 

Izuku could not know how he looks, in that moment. He has only seen himself, since arriving, in brief half-glimpses of reflections in windows that they walked past, and seen flashes of voids in his face in place of eyes, and the way that his fingertips have blackened, something dark and sick creeping up from his most mangled joints-bones-muscles. But still, despite these... despite his marrings, the evidence of how twisted his very existence is, currently, the way that he is, coming from the things that he has, he smiles at them, and he looks stunning when he does so, that single smile the sun among his night and stars and shadows.

The class adore him, in that moment, just as they always have.

"Hello, everyone," he greets, soft and low, perhaps a little sweet too. There are several more greetings in return, and Mina doesn't hesitate to offer him to join them, they were just about to start a film.

The offer shudders through him, barely quelled by the pressing warmth of seven pairs of hands, and Izuku spends half a second fighting with himself, trying to settle whether it will hurt more or less to miss this opportunity but also to have to sit in a crowd of ghosts- He can't bear not to, he thinks. Not now that he has at least a version of his loved ones.

So Izuku nods, except he also can't bear to sit right in the middle of them all, where he might have to press up against people from his past, and where it's hardest to defend them (he knows that today shouldn't be a dangerous day, he knows that they're on UA campus before the League had the means or desire to tear down their walls, he knows that everything is okay right now; it's impossible to translate that logic into calm, however, to soothe his aching heart-), so even as he nods and smiles a little bit, he perches on a free beanbag against one wall, back presses against the solidity, eyes sweeping across the entire room, taking in the fourteen members of his class who are here, some random film getting put on, popcorn being thrown around a little before everyone settles in more comfortably. None of them come to crowd around Izuku, or even stare at him, not beyond the occasional extra glance that he very much doesn't blame them for. He looks different, after all, not to mention the general oddity of the day as a whole.

Izuku watches all of maybe two minutes of the film, realistically. He can't help that his attention is caught on his classmates. Mina has no ice-torn scar down her face and chest, a long line that she had proudly called her zebra stripe, grinning even with tears in her eyes after first taking off the bandages. Och- Uraraka's hair is not long and braided, fierce as ancient warriors. His own hair isn't shorn close to his scalp, and the movement of the curls whenever he shifts is disconcerting. Kirishima hasn't lost half a finger, and Shouji still wears his masks. There are just so many small differences, or not so small, in some cases, that makes this place that was once home feel oh-so wrong.

But it's still home. It always will be, in so many ways, and Izuku can never truly begrudge that.

Even if he knows that, later tonight, he's probably going to fall apart.

For now, he can instead settle back on the beanbag, not quite drifting but perhaps a little dazed, in a sense, watching on as his friends enjoy the film, on an evening that is safe and happy and calm, no lingering paranoia or sense of foreboding, even with a warped Izuku in their midst. They seem genuinely happy. (It's been a while, in a way, since they were happy like this. Because the future certainly isn't constant misery or depression or disaster, there have been moments of victory, of laughter, of delight, but there was always that lingering weight upon their shoulders, the shadows that would linger, ineffable, inevitable, inescapable, in the edges of their awareness-)  Watching his happiness, Izuku lets himself approach something like disassociation, for all that it wasn't his original intention, fingers dark and distant as a night sky, every breath letting him float a little further away. It's not entirely a coincidence that, after a while, the sensation of the beanbag beneath him is lost as well, his shoulders sliding up the solid wall until he's forced far enough back into his own mind and body that he manages to pause his ascent slightly.

It's a pleasant evening, like this. None of his friends call him out for Floating a foot or two up from the beanbag he had originally settled on, barely even glancing at him twice for it. No, they simply let him be, blatantly aware that he's not as he was, and that he isn't quite in full control right now either. No, they give him space and time and the occasional smile or soft glance, offering up only gentle goodnights when the film is finished and he stands alongside most of the others to head up to bed for the night. Still, nobody pressures him, and it gives Izuku that little bit of breathing room that he needed to literally come back to the ground.

Unfortunately, despite this, when he goes to bed that night, he does not stay in bed.

The mattress is wrong. He feels too small in it, the surface of it is too soft, and he does not have enough weight piled upon him, not a single person or weighted blanket or bag of belongings. He isn't even wearing his hero uniform. everything just feels too light and soft and easy.

He misses his family, the dead and the gone both.

Izuku is the only left now, isn't he? Or the only one left here, at least, because the only other people who were near him during that fight are all still their old selves; he knows that if, they had come back too, then even if they had avoided outward symptoms of it, they wouldn't have left him alone for hours. They were all far too reliant upon each other for that. Which, well, means that he really is completely alone in this past reality of what seems like their world, stranded in amongst mostly-remembered faces of people who will never be exactly the same as his family but who will surely be similar enough that it will always ache to see them or talk to them or even just watch a film with them, because they are an intrinsic reminder, one that he cannot bear to escape from.

The floor is beneath his feet before he can truly think about it, cool and solid in a way that is far more reassuring than the bed was, and he unlocks his balcony doors, pausing at the rush of cool air. He, admittedly, already feels a bit better for it. Calmer, and more comfortable. Doubly so when he can slump down onto the floor of the balcony, slot his legs in between the rails to dangle below, and lean forward to press his face against the solid chill of them. He breathes, there. Stares up at the skyline of trees and other dorms beyond that, the city spreading out below the hill that they're on lending only a glow of a distant horizon. He's not high up enough to be able to truly see Musutafu itself, but that's alright. It's hard enough to look at UA with no smoke and blood and rubble, he doesn't know if he could bear to see his entire city whole once more. Not yet, at least.

For now, he swings his feet in the cool night air, and lets his gaze drift up to the sky, drapes of clouds and the very faintest edges of what might be stars in the darkness. He'd forgotten, somehow, how the stars are brighter from UA, from up on their big hill, escaping some of the inevitable city smog.

He has missed it, he finds, even though he had forgotten it.

His own body feels strange, like returning to a building only seen in films except now he's supposed to call it home, but nothing in it is quite as he remembered or expected. His dark nails and ashen fingertips remind him of too-real monsters (ones that spatter the back of his eyelids in blood, in the crush limbs of loved ones, or splayed-open ribs, or a back pecked down to the raw-nerved spine-), and the constant presence of Black Whip upon his skin is... It certainly isn't unfamiliar, but it reminds him of the worst of times, shifts beneath blank skies to watch the streets around whatever shelter that they have found, ones where he has adrenaline but nothing to fight. The seven-eight-allofus shadows in his chest are familiar in a far better way, but still jarring. They feel different, now. More entrenched in his marrow, woven around his lungs and through his scars, gentle fingers scratching through his curls that surely belong to Nana or Yoichi that he never would have been able to feel before yet that feel so right now, so very natural, exactly what he needs but still notably different to before.

Lost. That's what he is now, isn't it? He's lost in time and space and himself, and there are faint stars to stare up at but what use are they to him when he can't even wish upon them.

Well, Izuku never relied on wishes, at least. No, he relied on his loved ones and himself and on forcing himself to get stronger and faster and better until he could strategise right beside Nedzu-sensei, or spar with Aizawa-sensei until they both collapse from exhaustion. He survived without a single true smile from fate, but with himself and his family.

He will survive again, he thinks, and this time he will do his best to make sure everyone else survives as well.

Izuku doesn't go to class the next morning. No, Toshinori picks him up not long after breakfast, still a good half an hour before classes are due to start, a sheepish smile on his face as he peeks around from the genkan, asking for Izuku.

He was busy stuffing his face with as much rice and miso soup as he could, delighting in the side dishes and the fruit he's already eaten, food this good and fresh and plentiful something he hasn't really had in quite a long time, but he was still fully aware of the front door opening, of a familiar gait taking all of five steps before pausing, before Toshinori calls his name. Izuku, still busy eating, reluctant on no less than five levels to stop doing so, allows a Whip to slip further out of his sleeve, to rise and wave slightly at the man, a greeting of sorts whilst his mouth is full of rice, both hands holding up his miso bowl, ready to sip yet more.

"Five minutes?" he asks briefly, right as he swallows, slurping up two mouthfuls and already going back for more rice. He's very good at pretending not to notice some of the more lingering looks from his classmates, the confusion or slight discontent at his... voracious eating. He doesn't blame them for it. Not when he feels as much a feral animal as he quite likely looks.

"Of course, my boy."  That nickname hurts to hear, frankly, sharp against his breastbone, but Izuku lets the Whip do a happy little dance all the same, almost nodding with how it curls ins something like a wriggling bow.

He doesn't completely ignore how Sero and Kirishima are chatting to the man, nor the general movements and noise and Quirks of his classmates, of the people around him as they move around. It's impossible not to be aware of his surroundings to a hypervigilant degree, honestly. At least when things are this busy.

But that's okay, because he's finished eating soon enough, resisting the urge to grab himself an extra snack because he knows that he physically does not need or want it right now, and won't for at least an hour or two, despite his fast metabolism. He's eaten enough to be nigh-on uncomfortable with it. Particularly as, in the moment that he steps up towards Toshinori, his entire being yearns, leaning in, from the very heart of him to the seven true shadows that wrap around his soul and bones and entire body, every single iota of him knowing that this is his person.

Part of Toshinori still lives within him, a fragment of the one in front of him and the entire, fierce heart of his future self too, a lion that rumbles warmth at the nape of his neck just like how Toshinori's hand has, so many times, over the years. It makes it hard not to simply sag forwards into the man, to give in to the comfort that he has missed for so long, that he has so craved in his darkest and brightest moments.

And maybe Toshinori picks up on some level of that, because he raises a hand, oh-so slowly but approaching Izuku all the same, settling it upon his shoulder when he doesn't flinch or draw away from the impending touch. No, Izuku lists helplessly into the hand that is so broad, so all-encompassing, upon his fifteen year old shoulder, and his eyes burn for the first time since he realised where and when he now is. Fuck, but he loves these people. He adores them so, so much, with every inch of his being, and he isn't sure how he ever survived without being able to hold each and every one of them close, heartbeat to heartbeat.

But he did survive, apparently so that he could have this moment of leaning slightly into Toshinori's touch even as he refuses to let himself fall apart any more than he already is, gentle hands pressing his ribs into place from within until he draws the much needed deep breath, then a second, and he can smile and move past Toshinori to put his shoes on, ready for the day, odd as it may be.

It's odd indeed, having Recovery Girl fussing over him again. He remembers, perhaps more vaguely than he should but it's such a distant past to him, how he had been nervous around the heroine by now, when he was actually fifteen, knowing her frustrations at his constant hurts but not understanding, yet, that it was born out of concern. In his defence, he'd had little experience in that when he was fifteen, and she hadn't exactly made it entirely obvious, but still. It's a little disconcerting, now, to see her as she once was.

Although that being said, she is understandably a little bit different to how she was with fifteen year old Izuku. Old Izuku? That. Him. Because before, Izuku didn't have protective Black Whips that would surge up at the wrong movement, at a hand a little too close to his throat or stomach, and when he blinked it wasn't the quarter-breath stutter of a dying star, an abyss that, oh-so briefly, failed to exist, before it is wide and yawning once more, entire constellations decaying in their aggrieved depths.

There are ghosts within this boy, and he is no longer a boy.

It is odd, to say the least, for the child you knew as golden-hearted and self-sacrificing and eager-eyed to suddenly cut such a different figure, so many shadows and little warps of what he once was. It does not mean that this new Izuku is frightening or upsetting per se, he’s just… it’s just different. Something to get accustomed to.

And so Recovery Girl is slower in her movements, pacing them more as she would for someone like Aizawa or All Might, for heroes who were born to fight, who reduce themselves to nothing but blood and blows in the name of saving others, and who do so without thought or hesitation for themselves. For the heroes and third years that she treats who have complex trauma, complex instincts that tell them to shy away or freeze or lash out.

Recovery Girl is careful and kind but never coddling, brutally honest with her words and achingly gentle with her hands, and it reminds Izuku perfectly of sitting on a makeshift cot in yet another half-abandoned building, several of his friends and allies passed out around him, as she cannot afford to kiss his wounds better because he volunteered for first duty so instead has to use some of their supplies of bandages, keeping his broken finger straight and helping the stitches on his thigh stay intact-

That is not today, and it wasn't the recent past either, not truly, so Izuku just shrugs out his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and lets her get on with it. He pretends that this doesn't feel slightly wrong, or that he doesn't both miss and loathe the not-quite gentle way that Recovery Girl asks him to do various health and strength and mobility tests, because she is polite but not soft, understanding but firm and it's a dichotomy, somehow not quite processing correctly with him, but he appreciates it all the same. It's better than doting or worry or, perhaps worst of all, scolding, at least.

It's over not too long later, although it certainly feels it and they pause multiple times for students that come in feeling sick or with injuries, enough so that it's almost break time when they finish up.

"Do you remember much of your schedule, Midoriya-kun?"  He shrugs easily enough,

"Not really, no. Nothing at all."

"Understandable," she nods, turning to her computer,
"I'll get Nedzu to email me a copy of your timetable now, it'll be printed by the time your classmates come to get you."

"Okay, thank you," he offers up in return, a little bit terse but mostly still grateful, enough so that he at least doesn't get a chiding look for his tone.

He's far more grateful, frankly, when there's a knock on the door only a few minutes later, and Ocha- Uraraka is poking her head around the door, chatter and glimpses of others behind her.

"Hi! We wanted to pick Deku-kun up?"  She's smiling at him, even as her gaze flickers over to the heroine just long enough to ensure she has the woman's attention. Yaoyorozu smiles gently at Izuku from over the shorter girl's shoulder.

"Hello, dearie. He's here, no problem at all. Here's your timetable, Midoriya-kun, and don't forget to come back over the weekend, understood?"

"Yes, Recovery Girl."

"Good. You let that class of yours look after you, as much as you can."

"I'll try," he offers, only an edge of wryness to it, bittersweet but sincere, even as his class begin to duck back away from the door, crowding back away from it, further into the corridor if only to give Izuku extra room, and he appreciates it as he collects the apparently annotated schedule from the heroine, Nedzu's familiar script noting down textbooks and pages and projects next to various subjects. Below, there's even a list of recent homework sets. He knew that his class would help him get caught up, but a single reference sheet, one that wasn't even necessary, simply a thought to help him out, is more than appreciated. Nedzu-sensei didn't have to do it, but he did anyway.

It's nice to think that even though he's been abruptly shoved into their lives as he is now, the people he considers family still care about him and want him to be okay.

That thought is only further supported moments later, when he steps out into the corridor to find his entire class there, some neutral, one scowling, but not a single one appearing to actually begrudge being here for him in this moment. It feels... It feels like a moment of acceptance, somehow. And perhaps Izuku is reading too much into it, but the sight of them all, heart-breaking and glorious as it is, all at once, well, it means more than he can truly bear to think about right now.

He is lost, yet he is home.

It's in that moment that the class, turning to leave, to walk Izuku back to their classroom, pause, because there is something heavy behind them, weighted and waiting. It's more than enough of a presence that the class turn around to face the reaching shadows, hands coming up for fighting stances, shudders down their spines-

Izuku stands there, smiling at them, sweet and bright, and their hands fall back to their sides without a thought.

Chapter Text

Katsudon is quite possibly the best thing in the world, Izuku thinks. At least in terms of food. Because there's rice to fill him up, and tender pork in panko, and delicious sauce, and soy sauce-stirfried vegetables on the side for nutrition and it's just perfect.

He hasn't had it in... four years, he thinks. 

There are pleased hums deep in his chest that aren't his own, although they certainly reflect his own contentment in this moment, and he has to resist the urge to wolf down three portions in the space of all of ten minutes. He isn't a savage. He's just, well, a little accustomed to eating minimal amounts of relatively shit food. This, in comparison, is a veritable feast, and one that he very much is grateful for. He really needs to keep on top of his metabolism now, whilst he has a chance- Hopefully he won't have to keep up with it, not in the same way, but still, he would like to, and day to day he could do with keeping on top of his energy and Quirk. He doesn't miss how he used to get shaky, sometimes, trembling through to his very core, head lighter than clouds except he isn't Floating, not in that moment. It was uncomfortable, and awful.

(Izuku never complained though, not once, not when he stumbled at the end of a long day, not when he had nearly taken an extra portion of a week of meagre rations, because it hadn't been his place to. He wasn't the one suffering the most, nothing like.

He survived, didn't he? So it can't have been that bad, really, even if he doesn't want to get to that point again, given any sort of choice.)

But he gets to eat up a rather large series of portions of katsudon tonight, his belly full (his heart content, too, with the chatter of nineteen people around him, all of them happy and loud with it in the best sort of way-), content to listen to rantings about homework and Monoma sneering at them this morning and so many other random things that really don't matter but that are so important when war isn't looming and they're still fifteen, because , really, despite what they've already been through, they are still teenagers. Izuku in no way at all begrudges them that.

It's honestly nice to see them all so carefree and happy, so genuinely content with their lives for all of their problems that may still linger. Because, yes, Monoma is still a bit of a bastard as of this point, and homework is a pain that Izuku remembers well, doubly so when he would have rather been training, but they were happy, at fifteen, weren't they?

Although he's going to have to start doing homework again, isn't he? Gross. Maybe he could ask for something to get arranged with Nedzu, actually, because he's not sure he can bear to have to go back over content that he's probably lost because to be entirely frank his memory of the last... of the last almost-decade of his life is patchy in spots, a worryingly good match to his earlier childhood. And earlier teenage years. Huh, actually his entire life is patchy in a way that speaks more of repression than of just normal memory gaps. Oh well.

"Mido-chan?"  Izuku doesn't quite startle, but he does shift slightly in something close to surprise, looking up at Tsuyu for all that his attention spans over the entire table, and the room and windows beyond. He can't help the habit. Nor, entirely frankly, does he want to; it's a good habit to have, to keep him and his loved ones and others safe.

"Mm?"

"How have you been today, kero?" Ah, he does love Tsuyu, he really does.

"Pretty good, I think, thank you. What classes did you guys have today?"  Not a single person picks him up on his lack of knowledge over their current schedule, even though they all know that there is more to what happened yesterday than just some new Quirk evolution. For now, they're giving him time and space, waiting for Izuku to come to them first. It's more than appreciated, honestly. He isn't sure he could handle having to delve into what has happened to any particular level, not yet.

(He knows that he couldn't handle rejection right now. Not yet. Not when he's still so unsettled.

Yes, he also knows full well that his class are very unlikely to reject or blame him for something so out of his control. He knows their minds, he knows their fists, he knows their hearts. He knows that their love for him, as his is for them, is marrow-deep, entrenched like mountain depths and just as enduring. It survived the fall of a literal war, one that broke upon their heads like a wave that never truly receded, one that some called an apocalypse and others called inevitable, but that Izuku privately thought of as hell.

His class loved him through all of that. Izuku doesn't think that, even without those years together, anything would be enough to push them away from him. Not really. Maybe, hopefully, not even this.)

He gets to listen to a retelling of Mic-sensei getting startled by a spider that Kouda had to take outside because just out of the window wasn't far enough but he was getting five extra marks on his next homework piece in thanks for it. Or of how Iida had broken a pair of glasses when he misjudged his own hand chopping and smashed them off of his own face.  (Izuku remembers the sight of Tenya on the ground, an engine ripped out because metal embedded in skin is still metal, glasses cracked across the lenses, one arm snapped right off, yet resting gently on the ground beside him as though placed there by a caring hand except his chest was not moving and his own hands are bloody, one swollen in bruises from the day before-)  And Yaoyorozu mentions that a few of them have been writing notes for Izuku throughout the day should he want them. It's a lovely thing to be part of again, as much as he might be trying to avoid the actual school work side of it if he can.

He wants to tell his class, he realises.

Lying to them doesn't feel like a good idea, nor one that he's honestly comfortable with, not for a long time at least. A few days, maybe, and he kept One For All a secret for a long time, but that wasn't his secret to tell, then. Or at least it didn't feel like it. His time travel, however, is very much his own. Not to mention that the faculty are already aware... Well, it's something to keep in mind, Izuku thinks. An option. A possibility.

(He is scared, yet he is equally so certain. Because they all love him, and he loves them, his first friends in years and a family that they chose to make together, days and nights and the moments in between, the evenings of studying, cooking, watching films or drama series, early morning spars or runs in pairs and trios, squabbling over snacks and meal prep and just who's going to cook what this week because they can't stand to eat another edible-glitter laced meal even if it tasted completely fine-

His class are good in all the ways that matter and many that don't. Never have they failed to put their faith in Izuku before, and he really thinks that he can believe this won't be a push too far either.)

Izuku won't make a decision yet, of course. He's not even been here for two full days at this point, he doesn't need to push himself or the class too far too soon, not with news this big. It's a lot, he knows. And it's all very well to inform some of the teachers, those who are adults and heroes besides, of his circumstances, the edges of what has happened, of the fact that he is here and he has seen things that no twenty-four year old now alive has, or should.

It's sort of early the next morning, a good ten minutes before even the earliest of the class prefer to leave the dorms, when Aizawa-sensei arrives, coming into the genkan and poking his head around much like Toshinori did only the day before, scanning the room until he's zeroed in on Izuku, gaze weighted but far from unkind. Izuku raises an eyebrow without a thought, a prompting that the hero accepts without much hesitation,

"Can I talk to you, for a minute? Nothing major or problematic."

"Sure, Sensei," Izuku returns, standing up easily to follow the man, aware only after a few moments that his complete lack of nerves would undoubtedly seem odd to anyone else, his class very much included, but that's okay, he thinks. Izuku knows they won't press him on it.

And, well, he's got more important things to think about, like what Aizawa-sensei might want and what lunch is going to be and where exactly he was up to with his notebooks, because he hasn't had the chance to check yet even though he meant to last night. Although the Aizawa-sensei part is most important right now, doubly so as they're entering the man's private office, Aizawa waving Izuku over to the sofas as he goes to pick up some nutrient pouches, passing a watermelon one over. Oh. Izuku has to wonder when the man figured out which was his favourite flavour. Or maybe he hasn't yet and it's just coincidence, maybe he should ask-

"Sorry for the seeming big deal, kid, this really isn't anything bad or the like. I just wanted an actual conversation with you. We have a request, of sorts."

"Oh?"  Possibilities start to run through Izuku's mind instantly, a complete distraction from the previous thoughts of nutrient pack flavours, instead thinking of maybe a timeline of events in the future, to in-depth analyses of their own Quirks or that of the League, or the first cities that began to rebel, Jaku a tipping point of a bloody avalanche-

"Kid, Izuku, we want you to settle in, to try and get out of fight mode. Take a breath. Just for a week or so."

Izuku's entire being seems to freeze, then, encased in Shouto's sharpest ice, jagged in his lungs and fracturing in his bones.

(He has spent years and years forging onwards. He has spent his entire fucking life refusing to give up, to give in. For the last, what, eight or so years, he has fought and fought and broken himself into pieces that he couldn't even recognise just to be able to he save people. Yet too many still died, because Izuku charged ahead but what about those he left behind? What about those, even more, that died at his hands? Because Izuku is a creature of blood, now, a monster of shattered bones and split knuckles and a smile too wide, too sharp.

He saw himself, sometimes, mid-fight, a pivoting kick or a sudden jump that would have him catching a glimpse of himself on a window or puddle or the mirror of a crumble-fronted shop, and he would see the hideous facsimile of a hero he was becoming, the one with ink lashes and who did not need to touch the ground and who leaked smoke like a funeral pyre, eyes alight with that same bloody-minded conflagration-

Sure, he saved some people, and that would always be worth whatever he had to give for the sake of it, but that doesn't mean that he likes the monster he sees.)

He doesn't allow himself to stay frozen, however, because that's dangerous, that's when they get you, and he can't- Shit. He needs to focus.

"But I-"

"Is anything, to your memory, going to happen this week? Or even next week? Any major attacks from the League, or assassinations, or something similar?"  At a glance, it would perhaps seem sarcastic, or challenging, but when the words are spoken so softly, such warmth to them, nothing but patience, it's impossible to feel as though the man is annoyed with him, or trying to be sarcastic.

"Not to my knowledge, no," he hedges, because it's true. And he, Kami, he just doesn't know what else to say.

"Then you can afford to take a break. Kid- Shit, sorry, I'm trying not to call you that, but look, you've been thrown back into a reality that isn't the one you're used to anymore, and you've got to look at all of us and deal with it. That's a lot. It would be for anyone. You can afford to give yourself at least this week to breathe, and to settle in, and to figure out if there are accommodations that we could be making for you to ensure that you aren't being unnecessarily triggered or uncomfortable."  Aizawa takes a deep breath, one that seems to resonate in a rattle through Izuku's own chest, one that trembles fit to fall apart when the man offers up one last statement,

"We want to help you, Izuku. You're still one of ours, no matter what."

And oh. He had feared, or perhaps he thought he knew, that he wouldn't be truly accepted here, when he saw the brightness still in his classmates' eyes and knew that they hadn't faced a tenth of the terrors he had and that he would wish for them never to have to, so that- That means more than a lot, to him.

"I'm not entirely sure I can anymore."

"Then let us help you try, kid. Shit, sorry," the man huffs, leaning back to run a hand through his hair, looking tired but not resentful over it. That fact alone gives Izuku the confidence to offer a quiet,

"I, well, I don't actually mind, Sensei. You still called us all that no matter how old we got. It was- Uh, it was kind of nice, honestly."

"Huh. Alright, then, kid," the man shrugs, casual enough, expression a little wry,
"Not going to lie, that's a lot easier, even though I would have been happy to try. And if you change your mind later, that's also fine, understood?"

"Yes, Sensei," he offers, genuinely able to smile at that.

But the hero, to Izuku's vague dismay, hasn't forgotten about his original statement, because a moment later Aizawa is sobering once more, leaning in, elbows braced on his knees and gaze heavy but not dragging.

"We're not going to force you to sit still and do nothing all day every day, kid. You won't be alone, and you won't have to figure out how to change gears without any support. Just let us try to help you."  Izuku can only smile a little at that, hesitant and edging into a grimace, but mostly sweet all the same. He's grateful, at least.

(The thought of having to be so calm, so relaxed, so useless, well, it almost hurts. It feels wrong, even just the very idea of it. It's been, what, years, since he last sat still for many hours, let alone entire days, but hopefully this means that he might have a chance of something better, if Aizawa-sensei is promising that he won't just have to sit still? Of something that he could genuinely relax into without any problems.

Although he doesn't exactly have the most hope for it. He's learnt better, now, he thinks.)

"Right, come on then, kid, off with you. It's nearly class time."  

"Sure, Sensei," Izuku agrees, easily enough, pushing to his feet without a thought or hesitation. The man levels him with an unreadable glance, something with perhaps a dawn-glinting edge of approval or pride, something in shades of gilded rose in amongst the amber and shadows of his gaze.

Then the hero smiles, a tiny thing as proud and soft and pleased as can be, one that Izuku is familiar with by now but certainly wasn't at fifteen.

"I'll tell you one thing, kid, it's good to see that you've got a bit more confidence to you now." 

"Oh!" Izuku can't help but startle a little at that, because whilst it's certainly not a bad statement, it's a little disconcerting too. It's been a long time since somebody commented on his countenance in that regard.
"Uhm, thanks, I think?"  Aizawa-sensei simply shrugs in return, perfectly casual,

"You should be confident, Izuku, or at least more so than you have been. You've got all the makings of a great hero and a good person, kid, and you should know that."  The man falters for half a breath, just long enough for Izuku to almost try putting words together into a sentence except Aizawa is talking once again already,

"You should also know that you're safe with us, too; I can't guarantee that general circumstances will always be safe, and I expect you know far more about that than I could ever predict, but we as a faculty, as heroes, and as people are here for you, to help you."

It's odd, how much that not-quite promise means to Izuku. Because he has long-since felt fully, truly and genuinely comfortable around Aizawa-sensei, but long-since is perhaps only a matter of six or seven years; he spent a few years still not entirely comfortable around the hero. He wasn't with any of his teachers, honestly. It took him a very long time to learn that the UA faculty are nothing at all like those he had in his childhood. 

But it's been a long time since he was promised something like this. It's been a long time since he needed one, or since it was even the sort of pledge possible to make without outright lying. And the fact that, despite knowing that Izuku is well into his twenties and having literally just acknowledged that he's far more confident than he ever used to be, his teacher still wanted to try and reassure him... It means a lot. An almost painful lot.

("We're going to get through this, kids. You're our students, and I know you're going to fight, but know that we're here to protect you above all else, alright? You're my hellspawn, and you're not getting away from me now."

And they didn't get away from him. They didn't even try, after that day.

No, they fought at their Sensei's side until the day that he could no longer, his back to them all, fierce and falling-)

But Izuku swallows back the agony of grief that tries to choke him with claws dripping iron and dread, and he smiles instead, wan, wavering, present.

"Thank you."  There are no other words that could possible escape his stone-hewn lips and moss-grown tongue in this moment, no other words that could even hope to come close to every warring, war-torn emotion shuddering through him right now.

Aizawa-sensei does not lie, and does not break his promises. No, he takes them to the no-body grave, with his name beside his husband's, and he does not falter in a single moment of it all.

He (loved-) loves his class, and none of them could ever doubt it.

But, for now, Izuku bustles past the hero comfortably enough, scooping his own bag back up to sling over his shoulders, happy in the thought that at least some of his friends should be in the classroom by now, and he has a day ahead of him that should be calm and mostly easy, hopefully.

He finds himself pausing, though, just in the doorway, perhaps overdramatic except he's stuttering in place, breath catching, a fish upon a hook, sharp and writhing, Whips lifting from his skin.

"Thank you," Izuku murmurs once again, sincere, deep-chested in a way that aches as much as it feels sweet and right upon his tongue. He sees the edge of a soft smile in return, even as he steps out.

He can try to take a break, he thinks. For himself and his teachers and his class, he will try to breathe deeply, stay calm, and not lash out. It's a place to start, right?

Chapter Text

The first few days are genuinely fine. They're lovely even, in some ways.

Because, yes, Izuku is exhausted. He is war-wearied and struggling to sleep every night, avoiding the comfortable bed in favour of a blanket nest on his balcony, preferring the solid surface and cool air. It stops him getting too overheated, and makes the gentle hands of Yoichi and Daigoro and Nana feel all the more present, all the more natural. Izuku needs that grounding, he finds. Or, at the very least, he craves it, relies upon the feeling of eight extra hearts against his own, the press of their fingertips and words spiralling within his marrow, coursing through his veins-

They are the only family that Izuku knows will not leave him. Because he believes-hopes-knows that even if he lost the Quirk that was given to him, even if he is torn through time and space until he is a husk-bloated monster, he would not lose those eight hearts, not truly, not fully. They are his and he is theirs.

(Izuku has never been so loved in a way he cannot doubt as he is by his predecessors, by his family and hearts and ghosts. Because, yes, his class and his Mum and his mentors are all so good to him, and he has learnt to be sure in their love, but the vestiges never fail to embrace his very heart with their unfaltering warmth.)

The days are not quite as calm as the nights, hollow though said calm can be. Izuku isn't sure which is better. But, either way, he can cope with both, busy days or not. He can cope with watching his friends laugh and smile and chatter together as though their world never ended (it hasn't, yet, and Izuku hopes that it never will again-), and he can cope with having to sit still for hours at a time, as long as he reminds himself that it's the equivalent of sitting for an overnight watch or for a stake-out, really, except this time it's for the sake of his education. Yes, the education that he already has, but the point remains. It's worth doing his best. Even if there is something in him that is screaming right now, desperate to move and fight and carve out blood with his nails because this is beyond unnatural, now, because he is supposed to be protecting people no matter what it takes, no matter what blood is left on his hands-

So, okay, he gets a bit antsy, and finds himself exercising One For All in the tiniest ways throughout class, Floating just a single centimetre above his seat and making Black Whip trace specific patterns across his palms, spelling out names and dates to himself because it helps him focus and even now he still hasn't gotten his fine precision with the Whips to where he would like them, not when sweeping movements, mobility and grabbing, were long-since more important. His priorities were not what he perhaps would have naturally preferred otherwise and, at least now, he has a chance to train even more. Maybe this time he'll even have the chance to properly learn how to make full use of his blessings.

And with this, his days are manageable. He distracts himself with One For all during class, and eating during their breaks and lunch times, and with his class for whenever those things don't suffice, and then the evenings come around, and he can spend some time flinging himself from tree to tree in the woods, surrounded by sparks, his own supernova (he really must get around to registering a change in his hero name, he doesn't think he could stand to be Deku again, not even if Supernova is a reminder of the future-past, of the rubble that his home was left in, because Deku was never enough for anybody, but at least Supernova... Supernova tried, and even if some people didn't trust him, even if some people outright feared him, he likes to think he was a bit of hope for at least some others, that the smiles he was offered were genuine and whole-hearted-) to set the shadows into stark, jumping contrast, only the quiet of Danger Sense letting Izuku feel truly comfortable.

But it's nice to just spark up like this, in a way. He spent so long, years ago now, learning to supress his flashiness, to let it fade away with a tighter hold on his Quirk so that he could seep through the shadows as hope through fingers, unbidden and silken and gone. He learnt everything his teachers could offer and then even more, techniques from the vestiges and experiments of his own, all combined until he had a dozen different ways to fight a dozen different fights, until he could lurk in an alleyway with people walking past less than a metre away and they wouldn't even notice him there, no need for any fancy invisibility or silencing or Smoke Screen.

The thud of his feet against solid trunks is grounding. The cool air, sharp akin to adrenaline more than knives, is enough to keep him alert. Pooling One For All in his veins and bones and beneath his skin (he is a thing of static and smoke and souls, an amalgamation of scars and things torn asunder yet clinging on stubbornly all the same-) is a reprieve, a relief. A resurgence, perhaps.

It brings Izuku closer to his companions, to the people who live, now, only in his heart and mind and soul (they are part of him down to the core, down to the DNA, they are intertwined with everything that he is and has been and will be, no matter what he does or becomes-), until he can feel the brush of their shoulders against his own, the press of their fingers to his wrists and back and freckled cheeks, eight hearts surrounding his own. Their laughter, too, their chatter, their sweetness, is beyond a wonder. It's a fucking delight, frankly. Something to ease the stagnant pains of what he has to sit through ever day now, no matter that it has technically only been a few days.

He needs to move, quite simply. To fight and run and do something, even if it's not-

Well, nobody said that he couldn't fight. Not really. It's technically illegal, sure, but Izuku honestly couldn't give less of a fuck about that, at this point. Immoral isn't the same as illegal, and even morals can be smudged with enough ash and blood and soot over time that they are marred, twisted even.

Izuku has killed. He can and will do it again, if he genuinely thinks that he needs to, if he thinks that there is no other way around it, if he thinks that is what it will take to stop something so hellish descending upon them all again.

He doesn't want to, but he will. And Izuku thinks that such a fact is far more important, in some ways; he knows that if he wanted to, he would be too far gone, now. (Above all else, Izuku still hopes to be a hero. A symbol of hope and faith and possibility; he is not made for peace, not now, not like this, maybe never again, but faith, he likes to think, he can restore.

Or now, in this time, like this, perhaps he could even preserve it. Perhaps he can take the legacy of every one of his predecessors and see it grow to fruition rather than fall to ruin.

Well, he can only do his best, no matter what that takes. Then he will just have to see if his best is enough.)

But he has his class and his mentors and his vestiges with him, to keep him grounded (to keep him sane-), to help him fight his way through everything that may come.

Even if what may come is a third day of lessons, and the restless tedium that they herald.

As such, it's not truly a surprise that on said third day, Izuku decides that the school work side of this really isn't working out, just as he had suspected it might not. And so the obvious choice is, of course, to wave off his friends that lunch time (it's still so odd to even be able to do that, to see them so young and casual and content-), and to head up to Nedzu-sensei's office.

The door opens up for him ahead of time, the creature already looking up to meet his gaze, chirping out a cheerful greeting, sharpened by a curiosity that likely wouldn't be obvious to anyone less familiar with the creature,

"Hello, Midoriya-kun!"

"Hi, Nedzu-sensei."  He doesn't catch himself before letting the honorific slip, one that he only started using when he was... what, eighteen, nineteen, but it's beyond habit now and, well. With the door already closed behind him once more, there's no risk to the choice of words.

"Sit down, sit down," the principal greets, waving a paw,
"Chamomile or jasmine?"

"Jasmine tea, please Nedzu-sensei."  There's a flash of something warm-bright in the creature's eyes then, a glint of what could maybe be pride or glee or sheer satisfaction. Izuku wonders if Nedzu knows what Izuku himself is implying with his choice, or rather if Nedzu knows that Izuku is aware of what he's implying.  (It was never truly a code, per se, not quite. No, it was more a thing of habit, of ritual, and of occasion. There were different teas for different occasions but, more specifically, for different days and emotions; Izuku is long-used to asking, in a tone once hushed but ever more brazenly exhausted over time, for chamomile tea after particularly difficult days or weeks. There are many alternatives, of course, Jasmine being one of their mutual favourites, and each of them have different supposed effects, from calming to energising, and Izuku has never been convinced that Nedzu-sensei truly believes in those effects, but he probably believes that the placebo effect does all of his humans some good if nothing else, and that alone is appreciated-)

Regardless, jasmine tea gets poured out, and right as Nedzu opens his mouth to speak, so does Izuku,

"Jasmine tea is traditionally known as Sanpin-cha in Okinawa."

There's a moment of stillness then, not quite a freeze but simply a shared acknowledgement of oh, before Izuku allows himself to grin, even just a little bit, all toothy and sharp.

"Sorry, Sensei. I promise that it was pure experience."  And then his Cheshire grin is being returned, that slightly feral edge to Nedzu's that Izuku recognises so well.

"What a remarkable person you have become, Izuku-kun."  The shift to the creature using 'Izuku-kun', honestly, tells Izuku all that he needs to know, and he is undeniably grateful for it. (For Nedzu to be verbally affirming the change from him being a mere student, to be letting Izuku know that he considers him someone worth that familiarity, someone not necessarily an equal but something close to it... Well, it feels right. It feels a little, or even a lot, like coming home.

The pride in those words, the animal-rough undertone to them... Izuku has missed it. By Kami, he has missed it so, so much.)

"Now then, Izuku-kun, may I ask why you have come to see me?"  Izuku has to drag in first one and then a second deep breath, silently pleased with himself when only the former of them trembles, no matter that his voice is still thick when he next brings words upon his tongue,

"You mean I can't just come here to see you?"

"You can, Izuku-kun."  There's an instinct to laugh at that, to brush it off as though it isn't a press of rough paw pads right against his heart, the scratch of claws over his ribs that hurt but fuck, it's the sort of bittersweet hurt that only means love. 

"Thank you," he returns, because they are the only words he can so much as fathom speaking right now, raw and ragged though they may be and, no, Nedzu doesn't reach out to pat his hand like he might once have, but he inclines his head with a swivel of his ears, and nudges Izuku's cup of tea a little closer to him. It's more than he is owed, and Izuku is grateful for even that much.

So he picks up his tea, kind of wishes that he had asked for chamomile but, hey, at least jasmine is his favourite, so, well, he doesn't regret that fact too much.

He feels like he's eighteen again, only just truly starting to get to know the creature who he will come to spend hours and days with, who he will pour over plans and plots with, who he will debate strategies and Quirks and resource planning with. It's nostalgic, just as so much of his days are now, and far more on the sweet side than the bitter.

It's enough for Izuku to smile as he takes his first sip of tea.

Not only that, but he's calm by the time he wants to speak again, half of his cup gone, words pulled together into a smooth coherency that he's grateful to have returned to,

"Nedzu-sensei, I understand if it isn't possible, but could I maybe have a slightly adapted curriculum? I won't pretend to remember the classwork well, but I- I need something more, something different. I was hoping to do some analyses or something, maybe? And once I've written out the timeline, to go into possible strategies and ramifications for things. I- I'm not really cut out for school, anymore."

"Yes, I can imagine that you've been rather hardwired for battle."  Those words might seem combative or condescending or overall just harsh in some way coming from any other person, but Izuku knows Nedzu-sensei, and he knows the understanding in that tone, in the almost-hum of the words, contemplative. He knows the genuine warmth of that consideration, how it comes from a good place. It's simply not a human one either.

"Just a bit, Sensei," he offers with a wry edge of his own. Nedzu stares at him, only blinking once, very deliberately so.

"Then I certainly think we can arrange something, Izuku-kun."

The smiles they share then are a thing of blood-tearing and shattered crystal, and Izuku's heart feels ten times lighter.

It remains that way even whilst they begin talking about the logistics of it all, as they discuss One For All and how much of the content he remembers and how he will need to pass his exams because, no, he frankly doesn't give less of a shit about his own qualifications, not beyond what he has to have to be able to legally become a hero. (Izuku... If it came to it, Izuku would be entirely willing to go rogue and not look back; he has done it once, technically twice, before, and he will not falter to do so again if that's what it damn well takes to change things, to protect his loved ones and innocents and even those far less innocent. But, well, if he has the choice to do it properly, he will.

Maybe it's childish of him, clinging to a dream with fingers that were first toddler-chubby and have long-since grown to be thin and scarred, but Izuku still wants to be a hero. He wants Supernova to be someone on telly, someone little kids can look up to and feel safe to see on the streets.

He wants what he could not have, in all truth. Izuku just tries not to feel too bitter-selfish-greedy over it.)

And so he leaves his Sensei's office not long before the end of lunch, belly half-full thanks to far too many biscuits and a faint smile still on his face.

It's enough for his feet to nary settle upon the ground as he walks back to class, every step a little too light and a little too long, Whips slipping out of his sleeves to intertwine with his fidgeting hands, soothing at where they might strain otherwise.

(The sight of this, of the sweet smile amongst a thousand dying suns embedded in his skin, of twin voids surrounded by soft creases, crinkled up in something bright despite their all-over darkness... It's a warm sight, the class finds. One that is a relief, in a way.

They know Izuku isn't right. He isn't okay, and in moments he is happy but in others... In others, he is a grieving, haunted thing, and none of them truly know how to deal with it, how to address it. It hurts to see, yes, but they don't want to pry, don't want to push. Not when it can wait until he chooses to share anything with them. They just hope that he will feel comfortable enough to do so sooner rather than later, if he decides he wants to at all.

The class hope that he will, if only for the sake of being able to better support him.)

Chapter Text

Izuku wakes up suddenly, and for a long moment he isn't sure why.

For now, he lets Black Whip block a blade that was aimed for Uraraka's stomach, even as he pushes up off of the ground, Floating with sparks sharp around him. He ignores the crackle of flames, the shouting between people he loves and people they have fought time and before, because those golden eyes have snapped around to him. He cannot hear Toga's delighted call, but he can see it. It's in the gleam of sharp teeth in blue flames, the smooth-shard edges of her knife, the bunching of her cheeks.

Izuku snarls right back, kicking off of the ceiling, losing Float to drop with all of the weight and momentum possible, flipping over to crash his heel, no boot or even socks to protect him but that doesn't matter right now, because Black Whip is intercepting the two syringes that plunge up towards him, redirecting them, trying to keep them away from him, and six of them is enough, three a piece, to keep Izuku from being gouged into (four times, already, she has taken blood from him, and that has scarred him inside-out, because to fight someone who is, in one moment, himself, and then his best friend, and then his teacher, and then a perfect stranger, is beyond difficult, because they might all have her gaze, but it is still Uraraka's hands that he tries to break, or Kacchan's wild grin that he has to tear his eyes away from-) even as he successfully smashes his heel just at the junction of her neck.

It has the villain gasping out something that could almost be an 'Izuku-chan!' , turning her head, teeth bared, trying to bite at his ankle. Only the corner of a fang grazes at his skin, not enough for her Quirk to be able to do anything with, Izuku knows, so he twists, letting the weight of his upper body tip him over, his foot slipping away from Toga's reach.

As Izuku catches himself on his hands, ready to spin out in a kick but trying not to over-balance first, Uraraka bursts forward once, a snarl of 'bitch', on her lips, smashing her elbow into Toga's ribs, followed rapidly by a matching strike to the villain's stomach, then her throat, the brunette leaping back in perfect timing for Izuku to lash out with his intended kick, sending Toga flying backwards, breathless, full of cracked ribs and half-lost consciousness.

But it isn't enough, in all truth.

Because the flames are starting to throb larger and larger, stronger, catching at curtains and licking up into the stairwell and there is a wall collapsing, the rush of air sucking heat and light and fire into the gap left behind, and even a building made half of concrete can only withstand so much heat, hardwood and furnishings and the air itself struggling against it all.

Izuku isn't the only one who, in the space of about two seconds, realises that this fight isn't tenable. They need to get out. If they don't-

He is dashing around, scooping people up, propelling them away from the flames and towards other escapes, before he can think about it. Iida and Uraraka and Kacchan are doing the same, all of them mobile and Kacchan, for one, better able to resist the fire itself.

None of them wait to get the villains. Perhaps- perhaps that is cruel of them, but the smoke and heat are already choking them all, cough-rending and thick, and they- The thought of dying here, now, to this, in their very own home, is sickening. They're all desperate to just get out. 

Then they're clear, on the paths and grass and beneath the night sky, for all that it's cast into sunset tones with the flames consuming the building before them, the bluebell heart seeping into something all blood and sunlight around the jumping edges... Their home, their sanctuary, it's- It's falling apart, rubble and flames and the popping of metal appliances warping in the heat, sparks from the electricity and a puddle growing on the opposite end of the building from what must be a broken pipe, his family sobbing and talking and hissing in pain all around him, and they are Izuku's priority, of course they are, but also this is their home, and it has been destroyed so utterly-

He's out of bed before he knows it, some part of his subconscious regretting his choice to have ever tried a nap on that mattress, under those blankets, even as the rest of him is lost to hot-cold remembrance, the chill of fear and the heat of blood-adrenaline-fire, the chaos of what is half-remembered, half-felt, and how is he supposed to breathe, to function, to so much as think through the riotous weight of it, the horror of it writhing through him, worms through a rotten apple.

He's falling apart from the inside-out, and it's beyond deserved, for his failures. For his shortcomings, the people he has failed, the people he has killed.

Izuku never wanted to be a murderer. He wanted to save, to help, to protect, and he realised at a young age, when he was spattered with his own blood because of something he couldn't control, that trying to be good did not mean nobody getting hurt. He realised, when he watched interview after interview of heroes, when he read theories about their retirement reasons and began to realise that heroes had to kill, sometimes, that they can have regrets, that bad things happen to everybody. And so he learnt, like this, that heroes are not perfect, and that some of them have to do bad things to try and help other people. So he knew that he might have to too, realistically.

But he never considered the accidents, the failures, the feeling of that final gasp beneath his fingertips before there's nothing at all. He never knew.

Now he does, he knows the entire width and breadth and depth of it all, and it will forever haunt him, inevitably and incurably so. (He isn't sure that, even if he could, he would choose to forget. Because it is an awful sensation to know, they are awful memories to live with... His mistakes are what has made him the person he is now, and far less philosophically, the people he has killed do not deserve to have their deaths left behind simply to make Izuku's life more easy. Even if they have died in the future to his current self, he does not want that erased.)

There are stairs beneath his feet once more, the same feet, and he is covered in his ghosts' light but he is not Floating this time, no Whips to guide him, not when they are too busy curling around his arms tight enough to have his hands going numb, no different to when they are burnt to chars, when his scars are melting with the very heat of the throat beneath them-

(It broke him that, of all things that he has failed at in life, before and after and still in the future, he allowed his home to be destroyed; the place he was most himself, most accepted, most loved, where almost every single of his loved ones also called home, was destroyed, burned down around them, before their very eyes, and he couldn't help it, no matter how much of himself he lost in that fight, no matter how hard he tried, how much blood covered his burnt hands in the name of its wild-hearted protection-)

Now Izuku is here, again, never, always, and he can barely breathe through the half-felt conflagration that he is being ruined by. He- He just doesn't know how he's supposed to survive this. 

~~~

All of the class were downstairs. It's not a rare event per se, not on a week night, because they were all simply gathered on the sofas to play games and read, or sitting at the dining table to study, and Kirishima and Satou were play-wrestling in the wide walkway behind the main sofa, when there was a thunder of footsteps, heavy and quick and ever-closer.

Several of them rise to their feet, concerned, because they know that it must be Izuku, and he hasn't been right recently, not since the Joint Training Session, since his Quirk evolved, since things changed, but this- This sounds like something is actively wrong in this moment. And they're not wrong, judging by the way that the steps continue to be a rush of noise, and the door at the base of the stairs slams open all of a sudden. 

Izuku pauses, as the door slips shut again behind him, staring out upon them all, chest heaving, something blank to him in a way that is beyond unnatural, and then he's moving again, a shower of sparks and the faintest scent of iron-tinged ozone all that any of them process for a long second. (They are bloody and burning and his hands are a pyre of intent and malice and such fear-)

None of them realise it for a solid few breaths, but one by one they all look to the corner of the living area where Izuku is curled up, not upon the sofa, but in the gap beside it, crushing himself into the darkness between it and the wall. Even as they watch, those shadow-bright eyes start blinking out ever more slowly until, eventually, he seems to fall asleep, or something close to it at least.

He had seemed so... so stricken when he had looked at them, eyes a void gaping wide, jaw strained tighter than a garotte, breaths gone sharp-shuddered.

For a long few minutes, the only way that they can pull their attention away from Izuku is to look to each other, murmuring quiet concerns and questions, confusion thick.

"I- I'm going to ring Aizawa-sensei," Yaoyorozu offers, speaking just that little bit louder, soft-toned though it may be. A few affirmations are returned, enough that she nods, looking a little more confident in her choice now even whilst she pulls her phone out, dialling the hero without much more thought. There's little better to do.

"Aizawa-sensei?"  There's a faint noise on the other end of the line, to the rest of the class' awareness, something that only a few of them pick up on as a slightly worried affirmative, even as Yaoyorozu goes on again:

"Ah, we think something upset Izuku."  Another response, a notably longer one this time, before she tugs a little at her fringe,

"No, it's not necessarily urgent. But, well, he came rushing downstairs, and he was very distressed, then he was looking at us, and he looked- he looked scared, or like he was remembering something bad, and then he just curled up on the floor beside the sofa and I don't think he's actually asleep but he's something close to it, I think."

"Please, Sensei, yes."

She hangs up, and looks back up at them all, smiling with only the edge of a grimace to it, 

"He's on his way. He said he'll be maybe ten minutes."  There's a very quiet round of acknowledgements and gratitudes, blatant relief lacing it all, and the class slowly beginning to halfway relax again, to pay a bit less attention to Izuku, hoping that he's at least alright for the time being, willing to wait for Aizawa-sensei to come and, fingers crossed, be able to help Izuku more, or at least judge better what might have happened.

They're not wrong to hope as such, because even just the disturbance of the front door opening, quiet but not silent, has Izuku shifting, head snapping back up, those eyes, all shadows and nothing else, right now, open as he stares out at the room, unblinking, seemingly unseeing. He doesn't move a single other muscle as he, presumably, watches their teacher come into the living area. Yet, still, he doesn't blink. There is no shuttering of the abyss, and it draws his class in, several of them leaning in without a thought, because there is a siren call in that gaze, a gravity sung in bittersweet chorus. It is a lure. A dangerous rapture.

"Evening, hellspawn."  The words are flat, deadpan, not harsh, no, but rather simple. A few of them reply quietly, but none of them want to disturb Izuku, or to take their teacher's attention away from the matter at hand.

Although maybe they don't need to worry about that, because that dark gaze is zeroed in on their classmate, Aizawa's brows furrowed, but he doesn't seem entirely surprised. Or not much at all, really.

"Don't leave unless I ask you to, hellspawn. Or if Problem Child does."  It's... Well, it's a slightly odd request, but not exactly a difficult one, so they offer him a few quiet affirmatives and don't press further, no matter how several them are a bit agitated. It's not important right now, relatively speaking.

Not when their teacher is approaching Izuku's tucked-away corner oh-so slowly, carefully, every movement ever so deliberately planned, immaculately so. It's very obviously considered. It's almost painful to watch, in a way, yet heart-warming too. (They all know that their teacher loves them, in his own way, that he works incredibly hard to keep them all safe and sane-)

Then he's speaking, softer than should perhaps be possible, all coaxing, gentle, crouched just out of reach of Izuku's corner, his shoulders rounded with how he is leaning in, yet there's a notable line of tension to him, nothing but blatant concern.

"Hey, Izuku, kid. It's Aizawa-sensei. You're in the dorms, the whole class are with us, and right now you're safe."  For a few long, aching breaths, exactly nothing happens, nothing changes, Izuku's eyes don't shift or waver, from what any of them can tell. (It's harder to tell what he's focusing on, now, with no discernible pupil or iris to be relied upon-)

All at once, he shudders into something that must be awareness, a visible shiver going down his spine before he tilts his head slightly, seemingly focusing on Aizawa-sensei now. And when he speaks, it's a croak, something shattered right through (there is such desolation in even just a short snatch of speaking, an entire city left barren and crumbling-),

"'s not."

"It is safe."  The insistence isn't harsh, isn't sharp. No, it's simple and unfaltering. Certain. Yet Izuku slips his eyes closed once more, as though he cannot bear to see them all.

"Hot. Falling." 

The entire room seems to still, then, Aizawa-sensei visibly hesitating in a reflection of how they all feel. The pause is a long, aching thing.

Then the hero seems to restart, rolling out his shoulders, head ducking even lower, even closer to Izuku,

"Not right now, it isn't. There's no fire, no collapsing, nobody being hurt."  That makes very little sense at all to the class, as a reassurance, but none of them try to add in to what he is saying, because whilst it clearly isn't enough, there is something about the set of Izuku's jaw that loosens, a pair to his slackened-off fists that is a relief.

He still isn't calm though, not by any stretch of the imagination, with how his breathing, even now, is not yet steady, ragged and messy. The class, despite not being able to see it, can nigh-on feel the hero's frown, the concern lying thick in it all. Abruptly, Aizawa-sensei sticks a hand out, palm-up and low to the ground, apologising very quietly when Izuku shrinks back slightly, not a flinch, not quite. But then the man is speaking again, low and earnest,

"Here, kid, can you give me your hand?"  A single moment of stillness follows, before trembling fingertips unlatch from where they had been threatening to draw blood, resting just-barely atop Aizawa's calluses. The hero, oh-so slowly, oh-so delicately, moves his own hand then, shifting until Izuku's shuddering fingertips have traced all the way to the hero's pulse-point, barely pressed against the underside of his wrist.

"Feel my heartbeat, kid? It wouldn't be that calm if we were in danger right now. You know I wouldn't be calm if the class was in danger."  Not a single edge of the words is pushy or wavering. No, it's steady, certain, supportive.

It's enough for Izuku to breathe deeply, properly, just once, abruptly clutching Aizawa-sensei's wrist tightly enough that Jirou and Shouji can hear the literal creak of bones, yet the man doesn't flinch, doesn't try to pull away, not even as Izuku gasps out a single word that is raw beyond comprehension,

"Logical."

"Exactly that, kid, it's logical."

Silence falls, for a while. It's not quite comfortable, nor is it truly uncomfortable, somewhere in between, but the class will take it, to see Izuku gradually relaxing further and further, slumping by the dozen seconds.

Eventually, however, when the quiet has sat long enough, Izuku sits up abruptly, wriggling slightly forwards so that he isn't entirely tucking in beside the sofa. He doesn't let Aizawa-sensei go, his hold on the man still tight.

"I- I want to tell them, Sensei."  Aizawa doesn't quite falter, but he does nod slowly before speaking,

"That's fine, kid. Now or later? Whatever's best for you," the man insists, shaking the arm a little that Izuku is gripping as though to keep his attention.

"You're always so good, Sensei." It's beyond soft, beyond fond, so very affectionate in a way that is probably deeper than anything they've heard Izuku sound before, but is so lovely in a way.

It doesn't hurt the scene that there's the hint of a flush to Aizawa-sensei's cheeks, then, ducking his head a little, even whilst he shrugs slightly,

"I- Just take a second and make your decision, kid."

"I know, Aizawa-sensei, but thank you."  It says a lot about his faith in Izuku that Aizawa doesn't particularly hesitate before he nods, accepting that statement easily enough, even as he himself wriggles around so that his back is to the wall and he can see both Izuku and the class, the kid's toes ending up pressed against the side of his thigh.

"Then take your time, Izuku." 

"I- Okay."

The class don't know what to expect, then. Because they all know that something more has happened with Izuku than a Quirk Evolution, although whether whatever the changes are were part of said evolution or not is a whole other question- Well, suffice to say, they have been worried, in their own ways, to their own degrees. They want Izuku to be okay.

No matter what they might have been expecting, it's a fairly strong guarantee that it wasn't  this, the sudden blunt edges, something that starts almost blank yet fractures more with every single word, going ragged, raw,

"I- I came from the future. The fight I was in... Well, it was a fairly bad one, and a combination of Quirks hit me or were in action around me, and I blinked then I was here, in the middle of a training session from around nine years before. I just- I'm sorry."

There is a long pause of staggered silence.

"Hah?"

Chapter Text

"I- I came from the future. The fight I was in... Well, it was a fairly bad one, and a combination of Quirks hit me or were in action around me, and I blinked then I was here, in the middle of a training session from around nine years before. I just- I'm sorry."

There is a long pause of staggered silence.

"Hah?"

Izuku doesn't flinch, doesn't waver, merely turns his head to level that uncanny gaze (it is a knife's edge left in shadows-) on Katsuki, and he waits. Unsurprisingly, it takes all of a few seconds for the blond to speak up again, 

"The fuck're you apologising for? You didn't choose to come here, from the fucking sounds of it, and you'd better not be trying to feel sorry for yourself over, I don't even damn know, replacing our Izuku or some shit. You're still him, right? Then fucking get over it, and don't give us a damn stupid apology." He sits back all at once, crossing his arms, face set in a fierce scowl. Izuku isn't the only one who notices something just-warm to his gaze, grumpy though the blond may still be all the same.

"I obviously don't agree with Bakugou's phrasing, Mido-chan, but he is correct. Mostly. You don't need to apologise to us. We still love you, and it wasn't your fault."

"What Tsuyu-chan said!"  Somehow, that's the tipping point for a flurry of other agreements and reassurances and just- just sheer kindness that is beyond overwhelming.

It's undoubtedly the reason for Izuku gasping out something between a laugh and a sob, no tears but a smile, instead, as he shoves his face back into his knees, hand spasming tighter around Aizawa-sensei's pulse, the sound ugly and torn and absolutely beautiful all at once, all a catching breath and a keen.

The class stay quiet, murmuring quietly between themselves, not pulling any attention to Izuku's current situation. They do not leave either, of course. No, every single one of the class stay, waiting for Izuku, not wanting to leave him to this dissolution with only their teacher for support. (They want to be here for him. Izuku chose to trust them with something so big and so heavy and what clearly has even more behind it than they have just been told, because a single implication of a big fight, alone, had so much horror to it, so much grief, and they know down to their bones that there is yet more weight to be carried, more weight that they wish to share, if only so that Izuku's shoulders stop shaking like this, so that he doesn't draw blood with how desperately he clings to a tiny piece of life, of calm-) 

And, eventually, Izuku's shoulders begin to still, his breathing not catching at all, and his hold on their teacher's wrist slackening slightly.

"Sorry, Sensei."  The man simply shrugs a little, jerky but dismissive, even as he has yet to draw his wrist away from Izuku's now-loose hold,

"Bah, kid, hush."  Izuku pauses for a second, then smiles, that slightest edge of something sharp to it, almost a Cheshire grin,

"I'm most of your age, now."

"You're still in your twenties, Problem Child. You've got a lot more time travel to go if you want to get to my age whilst I'm still said age."  The words are suspiciously soft, teasing without being sharp in any way at all, and a tiny bit more of the roundedness of Izuku's shoulders slips back, straightening up slightly.

"I knew you at nearly forty, Sensei. You have a lot of grey hair by then."

There's a moment of stillness, a round of giggles and snickers and Kaminari outright howling with laughter, earning the entire room a sweeping, albeit half-hearted glare, barely even a flicker of crimson to it.

"Because of you hellspawn, I have no doubt."

"I mean, yeh, a lot of it was," Izuku snickers, thoughtlessly swiping his thumb along Shouta's wrist, a gentle movement, an affection that he doesn't seem to notice himself.
"A few too many stupid pranks and far too many fights. This one time, Hanta and Momo and Hitoshi and I may have sort of laid a trap, for training purposes, and may or may not have caught a villain in it by accident, a pretty major one at the time-"

"Was any blood drawn?"

"Nah," he returns, shaking his head even as he laughs a little (there is something so bittersweetly fond to his expression, to the warmth in his eyes and tremble to his lips-),
"Momo made some poison and I injected it."

"Right. Of course you did."  Aizawa-sensei sounds so very exhausted, wiping his free hand down his face, but he's also smiling a little bit, exasperated more than frustrated.

Izuku just giggles, only a little wobbly around the edges,

"He had a very solid head. We'd confirmed that already." 

"Through a fight?"

"Through several," Izuku confirms, only vaguely amused, sobering a little in the next moment,
"He- Well, he was pretty fucking vicious." There's a very brief pause then, less than a breath, before Izuku is shrugging, smiling again in a way that isn't quite as full but is still genuine, at least,
"But, hey, good timing is good timing. Even if it meant we couldn't prank Kacchan."

That warrants a suitable outburst, and people egging Katsuki on, and more shouting and laughing, and it all falls apart in the funniest way, one that Izuku is very much content to listen to without any interruption

"Maybe we should put your most-of-my-age to the test then, kiddo?"

"A spar?" And Izuku has visibly perked up, eyes going wide in delight, tugging lightly on Aizawa-sensei's wrist in what can only be called excitement, 

"If you want to, yes," the man replies, only a wee bit wry around the edges. Izuku doesn't even bother to roll his eyes in return,

"Oh, no, I do, I really do."

There's a beat where Aizawa eyes him up, something dawning in his gaze, not quite glee or regret, but perhaps both,

"I dread to think what I've just gotten myself in for."

"A delightful few hours, of course!"  His delighted chirp is more than enough for them to have everybody's attention again already,

"Wait, Midoriya, hours?"

"Call me Izuku, please! And definitely hours," his expression becomes serious, gaze heavier,
"Endurance is important, even just in terms of standard patrols, let alone guerrilla warfare or battles where your opponents might have reinforcements joining later on but you don't have the same guarantee." 

Aizawa doesn't let them focus on the slightly more disturbing element of that response (not to dismiss Izuku's experiences, no, but to stop him being asked questions that he might not want, or to let them dwell on such things when Izuku has clearly tried to cheer them all along-), knowing exactly what will distract them all whilst also being an actual truth, one that will benefit them to know down the line.

"Kid's not wrong. We don't normally start emphasising it until partway through Second Year, when regular patrols are beginning to become a standard for you all, but it's not a bad habit to get started ahead of time."

That breaks out a whole series of questions, of course, ones that Izuku is perfectly happy to settle down and listen to, without much more thought at all. He's heard all of this, not quite the same but along the same lines, before.

It's nice, to hear his class like this. To see them like this, so happy and together and safe.

(There is no burning, here, no bluebell flames that make Izuku's hands slip with how they make a pyre out of him, because he will hold that villain until he couldn't anymore, until the villain was unconscious but the damage was already done, their home was already lost to flames and rubble and-

They are safe, happy, content. Izuku loves them all so, so much.)

Izuku breathes hard and fast but he is revelling in it, in how he pivots on his heel, a kick lashing out.

He was expecting how capture weapon coils around his ankle, tugging forwards and down, trying to pull him over. But, as Izuku was expecting that, it's almost easy to flip forwards, springing off of one bent knee, Float giving him momentum beyond what Aizawa-sensei could have ever easily predicted, and his trajectory takes him right towards the hero's head.

It takes him no more thought to bring his flip down in a sharp kick. He has been moving more than quickly enough for it to be abrupt, and even an underground hero's honed instincts cannot be perfect, cannot be as fast as a blur of sparks and whistling air. So there's an arm halfway raised, a few coils of capture weapon, but not enough for Izuku's kick not to do a decent bit of damage, his heel crashing into the crown of the man's head, only slightly cushioned. 

It has Aizawa's knees trying to sag beneath him, no matter that the hero is shoving his arm up further, trying to push Izuku back away. It's a testament to Aizawa's years of fighting that he doesn't fall down, his stance shifting, accommodating the abrupt moment of weak knees without making himself too vulnerable. It's remarkable, honestly.

Although it's also annoying, because it means that Izuku has to twist into being shoved away, sweeping one of his feet beneath himself so that he has a bit more power behind the elbow he aims for Aizawa's throat.

Yet again, he's blocked. Or partially, anyway. His elbow meets a palm, deflected, but that's okay. Because Izuku's leg is coming up as he continues into a full spin, and Aizawa, still slightly off-balance, has no chance to block it as well. Izuku's booted foot crashes into his knee. Something creaks. Cracks, perhaps. It has Izuku grinning, Cheshire-fierce, even as he dodges back from coils of capture weapon.

It hasn't hard to deliberately entangle his wrist in them, yanking back with his own momentum (the flash of grey veins and dark nails is alarming for the fraction of a breath, but he moves on through it, breathes, continues shifting his footing-), except then he's pushing forwards as well, a move that he knows Aizawa-sensei will be able to predict, but that's alright.

Sometimes it's more fun if your opponent knows what you're going to do.

Particularly if, when your punch is ducked, an elbow just about to dig in to his sternum, he lets Black Whip flare up, lash out and around, just for a blink, not long enough for Shouta to even truly think of Erasing it, just enough to pool a barrier, enough that Izuku doesn't think he'll get anything worse than a light bruise, and he certainly isn't winded. Which means that he's in a far better situation than the hero will have predicted.

It gives Izuku the half-second he needs to activate Float abruptly enough to flip straight forwards and over on the spot, making use of the reduced weight (well, not quite, but Izuku doesn't need to think about that right now-) to do so more quickly than Aizawa-sensei can fully react to. 

Izuku wraps his legs around the man's neck, tight and uncaring of the position, because it means that he's nigh-on strangling the man. He even managed to slide most of his legs beneath the capture weapon, so it'll be hard to pull him away, in all truth.

Izuku should know. He's done this before, frankly, and this is one of his most successful attempts yet.

In fact, the hero, despite his scrabbling hands and writhing capture weapon, the way that he spits and snarls, throws himself to the ground in an effort to make Izuku have  to let go, but he doesn't. No, he's suffered through far worse than some battering and bruises, even if one of his ribs strains enough to crack.

Shouta has to yield soon enough. It's only a spar after all, and Izuku has strong legs and an even stronger stubbornness. And, sure, in a realistic fight he probably would have fought harder to get off, and in a fairer fight he wouldn't have been caught in the hold in the first place, but life isn't fair. The battlefield is even less so.

So when the man pats his hip gently, and offers up a verbal concession, strained though it may be, Izuku is quick but careful in letting go, rolling back to lie flat on the floor for a moment before he sits up, ignoring the creaking protest of his rib (yeh, that's definitely pretty badly cracked, but oh well, it's not about to stab him in the lung unless he's an idiot-) to check on Aizawa-sensei instead. And, well, the man is a bit red in the face, and clearly nursing a fair few bruises and possibly his own fractured bones or sprains, but nothing too bad. Izuku is glad, admittedly. It's been a fair old while since he's had such a low-stakes spar.

Izuku needed this. He needed the movement, the adrenaline, the chance to just move instead of thinking, breathing in that fighting rhythm, all sharp and short and controlled-

He needed to fight. Izuku has no shame in that fact. He needed to feel flesh beneath his knuckles, the shudder of bones from a kick. And, at least, fighting Aizawa-sensei means that Izuku doesn't have to worry too much about how he's fighting, not when half of his dirty tricks were picked up from the man, and not when he is fully aware of what a minimum-holds-barred spar means, far more than Izuku would wish upon his classmates at fifteen.

But, equally, he's also fully aware that he can't spar with Shouta every single day. He can't even spar with a teacher every day, not really. He wouldn't like to put that onus on them. Nor, frankly, does he know if he could handle the strain of fighting his allies even semi-seriously on a daily basis. (He remembers how Thirteen's torso was cut right through, and how the resulting vacuum had destroyed two streets before it collapsed into itself, the people that they could not save from the flying rubble or the vacuum itself, and he doesn't think he could ever strike the hero across the midsection-)

He needs something else. And, well, he also needs to act. Because all Izuku has been able to think about, in the nights, and too-often in the days too, is how he might change things, about the deaths that he might be able to prevent.

All For One's systems need to be pulled apart. Shigaraki cannot be allowed to become the monster that plagued them all. The entire country shouldn't have to lose their faith in the Heroics system; they should be able to solve at least some of the issues in the system without their entire society falling apart, so that when things go to shit, the civilians feel able to trust in the heroes still, rather than-

Well, Izuku just doesn't want to see the world fall into a repeat horror of what he was living through and what so many people died to.

It's the next day, however, when he comes to that conclusion, and he comes up to Aizawa-sensei at the end of a Heroic Law and Ethics class, not letting any hesitance creep in because this is important, and he knows it needs doing,

"Can I talk to the teachers? All of them, that is, when there's a good timing for it?"  Aizawa-sensei raises a single eyebrow, but nods all the same. The ease of it is a wonderful thing.

"Sure, kid. I'll get Nedzu to arrange something. One of us will let you know," the hero offers, and Izuku ducks his head with a quiet gratitude before following his friends out of the classroom for lunch.

And the next day again, he's in the meeting room opposite the faculty office for his lunch break, finding himself sitting directly to Nedzu-sensei's right, Aizawa-sensei to his left, and Toshinori opposite. It helps, in a way, to have his most beloved mentors around him, no matter that it also aches. But he has other things to focus on, right now. Such as what exactly he's going to say, how much detail he's going to go into.

"Thank you all for agreeing to this meeting. As you will have noticed, Izuku-kun is here to talk to us. Izuku-kun, as per your request I did indeed fill in the rest of the staff of your situation, so please feel no need to censor yourself. You shall be treated as the adult hero you are in this context."

"Thank you, Sensei."

Dragging in a deep breath, Izuku rolls his shoulders out a little bit, and lets his words march upon his tongue as they would when he talked through a battle strategy, steady and firm.

"This current point in time, to my life, is still one where the war and the collapse are relatively distant. The League's larger moves haven't yet taken place, and whilst the public faith in Heroics isn't excellent, it is still primarily intact. We need to take advantage of that. If things start to change now, I genuinely think we could avoid a lot of the worst of my future. I- We should genuinely be able to save a lot of people's lives."

The gazes upon him a heavy, not pressuring but very much weighted, an edge of something almost incredulous but it's beyond outweighed by the sombreness, the determination. Good, they're taking his words seriously, no matter how young his body currently is. (Izuku couldn't truly know it, but the age of his posture, his words, his eyes... If any of the faculty could have possibly doubted his story, there is no doubting the aged depths to that void-hewn gaze-)

All the same, just because they trust him to be himself, and to be genuine, that doesn't mean that everything he says isn't biased, or of twisted truth, and that shows in how Cementoss leans forward slightly,

"Not to be rude, genuinely so, but how do we know we can trust you? Because I think it's safe to say that you probably are Midoriya, but that doesn't mean that your recollection or perspective are going to be accurate."  Izuku is far from upset or offended by that; in fact, he's far more grateful for it than he perhaps should be, because he's glad that the faculty are being so sensible about it. If they just follow him blindly then there's far more risk of things going wrong.

"That's a big part of the reason that I'm coming to you all with this. I- I could have tried to change things by myself. I was tempted to," he admits, because there's no use to lying about it and he wants them to know how seriously he is taking this, how far he can and will go if he judges it necessary,

"But my ideas and memories and plans probably won't be perfect, and if I have more opinions, particularly with people like Nedzu-sensei, then I stand a far better chance of not making things worse.

His words are clearly being considered, and as nobody speaks up whilst he draws in a deep breath, Izuku continues talking without too much falter.

Because he has made a decision, for certain. (Izuku will give anything and everything he has to save people. To change what he lived through, for the future that everyone will have. Even if it ruins his own future.)

"And I need to start actively acting. Fighting. In doing so, I'm going to be out and working regardless of my Licence status."  There are several open mouths, the beginnings of words, however Izuku keeps on talking regardless, because this is something he refuses to compromise on,
"I don't want to make you all complicit, but equally I don't intend to get caught."  Many of the mouths close, then, curiosity overtaking what was primarily concern only moments before,

"And I know that if I have the fully-aware support of you all, then I stand a far better chance of doing so successfully. Sometimes being a vigilante prevents you from being able to get certain information or into certain places."

Izuku knows that he says that with far too much familiarity, doubly so with how there is a heavy silence settling over the room, somewhere between shocked and resigned.

Aizawa-sensei, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the one to break it, 

"Ignoring how that sounds like it comes from experience, I feel like I should be disagreeing with you." Izuku wants to interrupt, but he can tell that the man isn't done, and he trusts his hero to be logical over legal,
"But you came to us first, and I know that your fighting is good enough to be decent."  Midnight leans in a little then, grinning a little too sharply for all that her eyes are serious,

"Well that was my question answered, then, if Shouta thinks your fighting is where it needs to be."  Izuku shrugs a little, turning slightly towards Nedzu-sensei,

"I'm sure Nedzu-sensei could send you the footage of our spar the other day if you wanted. It was Gym Lambda, the late afternoon slot. We went for minimal Quirks."

Izuku doesn't think about that phrasing, call it over half a decade of open secrets, but perhaps he should have, because he is surrounded by very observant heroes, and even in the moment that Toshinori falters slightly, there's a notable spike of interest in the room, Vlad the one to speak up this time,

"Quirks in plural? That makes it sound like more than just yours and Erasure."

"Ah. Right." That was Izuku's mistake, frankly.

But he doesn't have to tell them the entire and whole truth to be still be honest with them. He can protect Toshinori's element, at least. It genuinely isn't pertinent. No, there are far more important things to share.

"I, well, I hadn't exactly intended to share this, but my Quirk is an... incorporated one. There's a bit more to it than that, quite a bit, actually, including the vestiges of the previous possessors of my Quirk, and the fact that it's a Quirk which All For One has a history with. He wants my Quirk. He has spent well over a century pursuing it, and whilst his body is dead his ambitions and mind are not." He draws in a deep breath then, taking a moment to assess if he has genuinely shared everything he needs to right now or might need to in the near future.

"Right, sorry, that diverted," Izuku huffs, reaching up to rub at his curls, once again reminded for a split second how much he loathes his current hair length. (It only brings him bad thoughts, the remembrance of cutting it all off because after what happened to his two mentors, after the blood and bones and-)

He does not let himself focus on the expressions of the teachers, not on the narrowed eyes or the slightly open mouths or the half-started words that all paused as he continued speaking. And he continues to do so, wanting to offer some level of proof to his words, not to mention get things back on track,

"But my point was that I'm a target, and my Quirk is complicated, with multiple aspects. I can Float, or use my Whips-" he lets his Black Whips slip from his sleeves once more, 
"-or summon a Smoke Screen, among other things. And with these complex abilities, and how I've learnt to use them in different combinations, I can mask who I am in a fight fairly reliably, from people who don't know me and my abilities well, at least." The silence doesn't hang, this time, Mic-sensei whistling quietly,

"That's fairly impressive."  And Izuku lets himself smile at that, just a little, but equally he has to acknowledge the full truth of it all.

He has been through a lot, all of his loved ones have, and he wants that to be obvious, not in search of pity but for acknowledgement of just how much they all suffered, of how much the future is utterly fucked. He wants the people who have the chance to help change things to understand what it is that they're changing, what fates they are hopefully avoiding.

"It was necessary."  The flat words are far from a helpful note to end on, however, so he continues speaking,
"I couldn't always afford to be recognised, and I spent a lot of time doing stake-outs, or in hiding, or just trying to deal with things more subtly. I ended up spending more time with Aizawa-sensei than pretty much anyone else, somehow, and not all of it was underground fighting, sure, but a lot was."  There are a few laughs at that, not mean at all, more slightly startled, and Izuku doesn't blame them.

Breaking your arms and hands over and over again in big explosions and supernova sparks isn't exactly underground material.

But that's the majority of the information that they all need, at least for a baseline, so Izuku just brings his bag up into his lap then, pulling out a small sheaf of papers that he passes directly to Nedzu.

"That should cover any of the major events for the next... three years, just about. Up to and including the fall of UA."

There's a pause at that, a moment where horror freezes them all in place.

Izuku probably should have predicted that, but he didn't even think about it, really. That being said, he certainly doesn't blame the faculty. (He remembers the desolation, the grief. He remembers turning away from their burning home and seeing that other parts of the school were fine, for a few moments of relief.

Except it didn't last. Nothing good ever seemed to. Not when there were monsters like Gigantomachia, or entire groups of civilians, and there are only ever so many heroes in a place at once-

UA fell, and they could never truly hope to save it for long. Izuku mourns it to this day.)

Nedzu being the first to speak isn't truly a surprise, because for all of his protectiveness, his ferocity, his territorial nature, he is a rational creature, voice perfectly steady,

"Nothing past that?" 

"I genuinely have no doubt that if we manage to change things up to that point, then anything beyond that shouldn't be relevant. The list of bases, experiments and hideouts are from the entire time, including if we knew when they were active and what was going on then."  Izuku hopes it will be enough. That it will help, and that with this, somehow, things might begin to change in the way that he is so desperate for them to.

"Excellent. Thank you, Izuku-kun."

"Always, Nedzu-sensei. You can call me in anytime to clarify or expand on anything. And if you're planning any raids or even reconnaissance, please," Izuku returns, bowing slightly in his seat.

The principal returns it with a deep incline of his head, and it admittedly surprises Izuku himself a little. It's not usually a mutual and obvious respect that is so quickly returned; it took him over a year to earn such a blatant sign of respect from the creature before.

But Izuku will be grateful for what he has, now. For the opportunity he has, that his mentors are continuing to support him in, to change things.

Maybe, this time, his home will not fall to rubble and flames. Maybe his loved ones will not die to Quirks and accidents and wounds that simply don't stop bleeding, will not be lost to his own mistakes, or so Izuku hopes. (He hopes it with all that he has, with all that he is. No matter what sort of monster it turns him into, no matter if it kills him, Izuku will change things. 

There's no other choice.)

Chapter Text

Izuku isn't surprised that he's being followed, but that doesn't mean that he loves it either. It's been over an hour already. Over rooftops, through allies, waiting for him, out of reach or obvious sight, as Izuku had paused to deal with a few muggers, they followed him.

"Want a snack?" he offers, calling quietly over his shoulder. After a long moment, there's a soft snort, and Aizawa-sensei appears from the shadows several roofs over.

"Should have known you were aware of me."

"You should have," Izuku agrees, for all that it's a light-hearted thing.

(How is Aizawa-sensei to know that he was the one that taught Izuku to manipulate his instinct to draw away, to shuffle through shadows for his own safety, until he could sprint almost in broad daylight and be subtle about it, gazes skimming right past him, not a single bit of attention drawn-

How is Aizawa-sensei to truly understand that he was such a big part of the hero that Izuku is today?)

“Here, kid, have a nutrient pouch,” the man offers as he comes to sit beside Izuku, both of them dangling their feet over the edge without a thought.

”And have some crackers,” Izuku returns, accepting the pouch and holding out a small pack of crackers in return, insistent,

”You can’t say no, I know you actually like this brand.”  There’s a pause then, assessing rather than upset.

But all at once the hero is taking the crackers with a soft snort, something horn of both disbelief and amusement, pulling the crackers open.

”Thanks.” He lets that hang a little, an unspoken question to it. One that Izuku hadn’t yet decided upon.

That, of course, isn’t to say that he hasn’t thought about it, however, and the yet-unmade choice falls easily off of his tongue, golden-rich in the promise of a new day:

”Twist.”

Perhaps it’s a little less grandiose or eager or… notably heroic as Aizawa-sensei was expecting, because he doesn’t immediately acknowledge with it. No, he mulls it over. Contemplates, weighs, considers it, before he nods, a brief duck of the head, gaze heavy without dragging Izuku’s heart to an ugly place amongst his guts.

”It’s logical, kid. A reminder to yourself and us but that doesn’t have any obvious implications to an outsider, short and unceremonious enough to suit a vigilante. It works well.” Izuku can’t even be annoyed with himself for the pleased thrill that nudges at him then, dark fingertips twisting together now that he had token off the thin black gloves he was wearing.

Aizawa-sensei has never stopped being a teacher that Izuku wants to make proud, not even through the hero’s own death.

In lieu of any of that, Izuku takes a bite of his own snacks before speaking again, words immaculately casual.

“My hero name ended up being Supernova, in the long run.”  Aizawa-sensei hums for a moment, non-committal, 

”Was it because of the class?” 

”In large part, yes.” He can't help how he's smiling at that, fond of his hero name, one thing that he has never felt tainted by the way that their worlds fell apart. 

"Only in part, though?"

"Large part. But yes."

There's a brief lull, but Izuku continues speaking, then, trusting his teacher,

"I- There is more to Deku than I ever chose to explicitly reveal, although I know you had put a lot of it together judging by conversations we had when I came back and the initial surge was over-"  Izuku doesn't miss how Aizawa-sensei shifts, at that, blatantly curious, but the man doesn't push, and so the younger keeps on talking right through it,
"-it wasn't something that we had an awful lot of time to go over. Which, frankly, I was grateful for. I'm far better at doing than talking."

"You're not the only one, kid."  That has Izuku laughing, genuine and light.

(The thought hits Shouta, abruptly, in an ugly heat at the back of his throat and a warmth around his heart, that Izuku is comfortable like this. Something about this, their words or their sitting place or just the atmosphere itself, is familiar to his Problem Child in a good way. He's relaxed. Not unobservant, of course, no, he is still alert to the smells and shifting sights and floating-up, echoing-out sounds of the city around and below them, but there is an unspooling of the elastic-stretched tension in his shoulders, those all-dark eyes losing the sharp-folded crinkles around their corners.

Izuku looks happy, Shouta thinks, and he finds that the dark fingernails and all-shadow eyes mean nothing against the expression that is almost a smile, and how he leans closer, just a tiny bit, to the hero.)

For now, however, rather than pushing and prodding at the heavy could-be conversations that linger at what must be both of their awareness, the pair simply allow themselves to start eating, instead, the rustle of packaging and occasional crunch of a cracker enough to keep a more stilted silence at bay.

"I've missed this."  There is a grief, a simple yet oh-so weighted thing, surely the depths of an entire ocean layered upon its fragile bones, and Aizawa-sensei does not recoil from Izuku's raw foolishness.

No, he turns to look Izuku right in the eye, no heed paid to how he is no longer the student that the man has known, to how different Izuku is now, in heart and mind and body, because he is still Izuku, and that is surely the only reason that Aizawa-sensei can reach out so easily, can clasp a hand around Izuku's ash-veined wrist, and he can speak with a fierce, soft sincerity,

"I'm glad I get to have it."

Izuku's breath hitches, yet he does not tear up or fall apart or say another word, simply closing his eyes and continuing to breathe steadily.

Whilst it takes time, a few minutes later the teacher briefly tightens then releases his hold on Izuku's arm.

"Like the haircut," Aizawa-sensei offers up, a shamelessly transparent attempt at lightening Izuku's mood a little, and it works, well enough to have him huffing out a mostly-laugh at least, wry,

"Thanks. Did it myself."  That gets him a scowl-smile in response,

"No offence kid, but I can tell. When we get back, or tomorrow, want Nemuri or Hizashi to neaten it up a bit? They're both pretty good at hair shit."

"You know what, sure."  There's a falter, a moment where more words hang upon Izuku's lips, the holding-high of a pendulum, ready to fall.

Izuku lets it, the weight cutting across his tongue as a blade his skin,

"Mina was the one who tidied it up for me last time."  And yet Aizawa-sensei puts no particular weight to it, does not add to the anchors pulling upon Izuku's heart,

"Did you do it in a rush then too?"

"You could say that," Izuku responds, only a slight edge to it, a curling-in hesitancy that isn't reluctance, not quite, no, it's more a rueful thing. Bittersweet.

Shouta doesn't push. It isn't the time or place for that.

"You'll have to tell me sometime," he offers instead, clearly trying to keep the tone light for Izuku's sake, a fact that is very much appreciated,
"Want to finish up patrol?"

"Sure, Eraser."

(Izuku is glad not to have to speak, yet, upon or around how, in a fit of agonised grief, clutching dark-blonde-green locks in his bloody fist and a knife in the other in a moment of logic prior to leaving for patrol, he had realised that he not only wanted to cut his hair short once more, but that it would be genuinely sensible to do so before going out on patrol, if only for the sake of being less recognisable.

If it makes him feel safer, more himself, then, well, neither of those hurt either, not at all.)

They both finish up the last of their snacks then, and stand. Right as Aizawa-sensei opens his mouth to say something, Izuku starts to stretch. It earns him a brief nod of approval, which admittedly has something warm in his chest seeming to shift, a rumble of half-teasing, half-content murmurs swarming around his heart that Izuku pats his chest in a silent quieting for. Except for one sharper little tug-poke-something further down his ribs. Honestly. Izuku would like to think that a bunch of adults would be more mature, but he knows his little group of souls more than well enough now to know better.

"Let me lead?" Izuku asks, before they can set off, knowing full well that he has some specific places he wants to go past before returning to UA for the night, and he trusts Aizawa-sensei very much indeed, but patrolling together is still easier if one person is taking point with the other supporting, particularly as the hero isn't used to fighting alongside Izuku yet. 

"Understood, Twist."  And that easy acceptance is everything that Izuku needed and hoped for, truthfully.

"Then let's go. I'll let you know when we get close to somewhere that requires more caution."

"Got it."

They move, then, Izuku the one to leap from the roof first, a single coil of Black Whip enough to have him swinging around slightly with the movement, setting him up for the next jump, perpendicular to the last.

He almost laughs, admittedly. There is a rush, adrenaline and a relief and the chill of night air; it has been a long time since he could so openly roof-run without any particular fear and, yes, this has a far more serious intention behind it than simply running around under a few-stars sky, but, well, it's a beneficial side effect all the same. (It helps, frankly, to have his teacher with him, a comforting presence just behind him that he revels in. It's a safety. Because he hasn't had his mentor with him for years, multiple long aching years, ones where things seemed to get steadily worse and worse, and so simply having the man with him is an almost literal miracle.

Izuku hasn't had much luck over the years, it has to be said. And he isn't sure, truly, that this entire sent back in time thing has exactly been a stroke of luck either, but there are certainly positive sides to it as well.

Moments like this is very much one of them.)

There is a small list of places that Izuku wants to check up on that are local enough to work for a school night, but he's entirely willing, and wanting, to continue to interfere with anything he comes across.

Case in point, there is the sound of scuffled movements somewhere nearby, and they both freeze. After a single moment, Izuku tilts his head slightly, hair too short now to fall around his face, before he raises a single hand. Shouta shouldn't be surprised, really, when the kid starts using Short Sign all of a sudden, and he's able to focus on it easily enough, but it's still disconcerting for a breath.

He taps the kid's shoulder twice in affirmative (it would be illogical for the agreement to be a single tap, in case someone escalates a situation where they shouldn't, a fact that Shouta has had to point out many a time-), and he doesn't love the idea of not going right down beside his student, but equally he's been giving Izuku space all evening so far, keeping his distance even when he was fighting off the occasional mugger, and it feels wrong to do so. And, right as there's a cry of pain, the kid pulls up a mask, swells with shadows, shorn-short curls shifting, not a single glow of a supernova spark, those tendrils flaring out, ink and blood and night-shards.

Then he comets down to the alley below, and Shouta steps up to the edge of the roof, both ready to intervene and very much needing to watch on, both out of curiosity and that same readiness to step in should it become necessary. (He trusts the kid. He has faith in Izuku's abilities, particularly after their spar together, but it would go against every instinct within Shouta to not watch over him.)

And so he watches on as those Whips crash through the alley with massive power and immaculate precision, wrapping around elbows and waists and jaws, yanking two men back, wrapping around knives. Two coils, ever so gently, support the young man who was being attacked in the first place, stopping them from falling to the ground. Those two Whips that are supporting the victim don't move so much as an inch no matter that Izuku- that Twist is spinning around on his heel to crack a heel across one of the attacker's jaws, even whilst the other man is thrown quite viciously into a wall. Both of them are promptly dropped to the ground. Despite his instincts, Shouta doesn't jump down for even the basics of helping out. Plausible deniability and all that. Izuku blatantly doesn't need any help and that would just invite potential problems down the line. The less blatantly he can interact with Twist, the safer for them all. Even in terms of small things like this.

It's fine anyway. The kid has already done this twice tonight. There's literally no reason for Shouta to feel so restless about not being down there with him, now.

Thankfully though, it doesn't take long for the kid to have cable ties around the two men's wrists and checking the victim over briefly, already encouraging them to call the police and checking that they don't have any major injuries or anything, before he's ricocheting up the walls to get back to the roofs, and is guiding Shouta away in a different direction to what the victim would be able to see, wordless.

"Good job, kid."  Izuku shrugs, a little sheepish,

"Practice makes decent."  Shouta raises an eyebrow in return, wishing that those abyssal eyes were as easy to read as the kid's green eyes had been,

"Not perfect?"

"Inevitably not."

"Logical," he concurs, somewhat reluctantly,
"But equally give yourself some credit, Twist. Imperfection isn't useless."

Aizawa-sensei, in this point of time, has no idea how much those exact words mean to Izuku, the significance to them. He has no fucking clue what those words mean.

All Izuku can do, in response, is smile, a wan thing no longer hidden by his mask. And Aizawa-sensei clearly picks up on the weakness to that smile, judging by the shift to his own expression, however he says nothing, not wanting to press in this moment, they're not in the right place for this.

"Anything you want to say before we get to any of these locations?" The man checks, Izuku pondering for a few breaths in return.

"Nothing major, beyond how important it is to not get recognised. They- You would be very attractive to them, and anyone above a grunt will know who you are."  Aizawa-sensei nods seriously in return, gaze heavy enough that Izuku trusts the hero to have taken that warning seriously.

"Understood, Twist."

"I'll be able to use my smokescreen in an emergency, if we need to," he adds on, wanting the man to be aware of the last resort should it be necessary,
"It isn't harmful to breathe in, per se, but it's best to breathe through your capture weapon just so it doesn't catch at your throat."

With that settled, both of them content that any necessary forewarnings have been mentioned, they continue on for the night. Nothing else crops up in the streets directly below or around them as they make their way through the city, and it takes twenty minutes to get to a place where Izuku Short Signs him for caution.

Shouta immediately heightens his own awareness beyond his usual alertness, something that undeniably verges on hypervigilance, because he has very much taken Izuku's warning seriously (he remembers the Nomu, the mess of Quirks, and he knows that Erasure has a power that many people fear in their society-) and he doesn't want to increase their risk at all. (He knows that this kid could have very easily done this alone, could have gone off by himself without letting a single soul know, let alone a bunch of legally and morally responsible adults who are actually in a position to help him. Honestly, the ways that the kid has clearly grown up are remarkable and, in moments like this, stark.

And Shouta, for all that he wouldn't wish a single ounce of the trauma upon any of his students as his Problem Child has clearly faced, is still proud to see the hero he has blatantly become.)

They spend three inevitably tedious hours staking out two separate warehouses, a specific level of commercial office building, and a fourth and final place next to a hospital. 

Izuku's observations seem to vary a lot. In the hospital-adjacent building it only takes seeing only one single man, short and rotund with the reflective flash of what must be glasses to Shouta's no-night-vision-goggle sight, to deem it an active spot. One of the warehouses they spend over an hour watching from a distance, occasionally switching which half-boarded window they try to look through, and even then nothing certain is decided. The hero won't pretend to fully understand or be aware what exactly the kid is looking for half the time, but still. He's willing to watch as well, to take a mental note of any specific observations he finds out of the norm, and to wait.

He knows that they will have to discuss all of this tomorrow. Or later, rather, given that by the time they're starting to head back towards UA it's just before four in the morning. They're due to be in homeroom in less than five hours. Lucky them.

"Sorry, Sensei. Didn't mean to turn it into a five hour patrol," he offers up, sheepish. But the hero only shrugs, carefully casual,

"Ah, you're fine. Not the worst shift I've pulled, by far."  

"Still."  Izuku can't help protesting further, albeit rather half-heartedly. Aizawa-sensei doesn't seem to be going along with it though,

"I'd rather get less sleep accompanying you and have a nap through lunch than for you to go around by yourself, no matter how competent you are."  There's a pause, not uncomfortable yet a pause all the same, before Izuku lets himself nod, helpless but to smile a little,

"Thank you, then. We can wait to debrief until tomorrow, if you'd rather."

The hero thinks over that briefly,

"I can work with this evening if you'd rather."

"That should be fine. I can probably get Mic-sensei's essay finished up during lunch."  The hero stops walking at that. Izuku, in turn, stops as well, turning to meet the abruptly-Atlas-weighted gaze, all shadows and concern and something dried-blood sombre,

"Just remember to sleep, Izuku. And if you need some leeway on assignments, come to us."  It's difficult to protest that when it's so blatantly sincere, admittedly. Izuku manages it anyway, feet shuffling,

"I already get leeway."

"And if you need more, then that's what you'll get. You've done this all once before, and you have more to consider than just school, things that are very serious, although your grades are also important for their impact on your future."  Those points are even harder to argue against, enough so that Izuku doesn't even try to, allowing himself to duck his head in an almost-nod.

"I mean, I guess."

"Don't guess it, kid. Your future is as important as anyone else's."

They both know that Izuku's repeated nod is to avoid lying, it's blatant. He might be better at sharing responsibility and not detrimenting himself from the offset, but that doesn't mean that he's not going to put others before himself to beyond a fault. It doesn't mean that he expects to survive the fights that are to come.

Well, Shouta can work on that. The fact that his Problem Child is so much as letting them in to this degree is already far improved from what must have happened in the original timeline, and that's not even considering the knowledge they're now able to benefit from. 

Shouta genuinely believes that they have a decent chance of keeping the kid alive, target or not. It's just a matter of proving it to Izuku too.

Chapter Text

It's very obvious that Izuku is tired today. It would be obvious even if Iida hadn't bumped into him coming into the dorms at a quarter past five when the taller boy was leaving to start his morning jog.

He opens his mouth to question Izuku, doubly so when he notices that the other boy's short hair, but changes track quickly enough, seeing the exhaustion in the lines around his eyes,

"Are you alright, Midoriya-kun?"

"Alright, thank you, Iida-kun," he offers in return, only a little strained. But he's smiling, the tiniest expression yet seemingly sincere, which is a relief, if nothing else.

"If you are sure. Still, should you would like to come on a run with me, or if you wish to have someone to talk to, I am available. Sometimes a rest is more beneficial than a habit!"

"It's alright, I know your rest day is normally tomorrow. I appreciate it though."  Iida can only nod once more, unable to help how he chops his hands emphatically,

"Of course! You are my friend and classmate, it is always an honour to help!"

"Never change, Iida-kun."  Those words are an abrupt reminder, somehow, that Izuku isn't their same age, that he has lived through quite a lot that they haven't.

He clearly still adores them all though, and that's all the class really want from their supernova.

And so Iida simply nods, offering the edges of a smile, before heading away for his run, because people are starting to wake up now, at least, and Izuku is in the dorms so he'll be safe no matter that Iida himself isn't there to watch over him. Or so the taller boy hopes.

He was right to think that Izuku looked tired, because he comes back into the dorms almost an hour later to find Izuku sprawled out on the floor beside one of the sofas, nearer the front door, a blanket pulled halfway over him, a steaming mug of tea on the coffee table beside him that Tsuyu seems to have just put down. He looks asleep, at least. Or he's resting, if nothing else. It's a good sight to see, and explains the slightly unnervingly quiet common area; there are several of the class in the kitchen, making drinks and toast and leftovers and onigiri, barely talking and very clearly trying to be careful of not bumping or dropping anything. It's quite considerate of them, Iida thinks, a swell of pride for his classmates rising up between his ribs.

Unfortunately, by the time he's back downstairs again, within quarter of an hour, Izuku is awake once more, talking with Tsuyu and Todoroki as he sips at the tea that is surely lukewarm at best by now. He doesn't seem to mind. The class are happy for that fact, if nothing else, particularly as Izuku accepts the jam-slathered toast that Yaomomo offers him and actually starts to eat it without a falter or too much of a rush either. It's a normal eating pace.

The exchanges of proud and relieved glances amongst the classes would perhaps be odd in any other situation or with any other people, but this is Izuku, and they've admittedly been concerned about his unreliable eating habits of late, the varying extremities of blatant appetite absence and of being utterly ravenous. It's not healthy.

But, well, it's something that they can only try to support him with. Distracting him, so far, has proved one of the only successful ways to do so, and they're noisy enough naturally, chattering and squabbling and laughing, that it's easy to do so.

"Good morning again, Iida-kun."

"And to you, Midoriya-kun. And everyone else," he returns, nodding to the little group of people as he goes into the kitchen to pour himself some of his orange juice.

The class settle into their morning routine from there, easily enough. Do they orbit Izuku a little more carefully? Yes. After the first few times of startling him and watching muscles go tense, dark tendrils flaring, those Whips sometimes reaching out to encircle the most vulnerable parts of those around him, a loose thing covering throats and guts and hearts, thick and dark and protective... After those first few times, they had quickly learned to be very careful about sudden movements and noise, far more so than they had ever been before.

But that's okay. None of them mind it, honestly; it's worth it, to see how Izuku slowly gets more and more comfortable with them again.

(It had hurt, particularly that first while, before they were told why Izuku was acting differently, doubly so when he was so clearly distressed. The very sight of them had been upsetting, yet he hadn't wanted to be apart from them either, it seemed.

Then he told them that he is from the future, that he was part of a big, messy fight. It wasn't hard to extrapolate, from him and from logic, that to have been nearly a decade in the future, at least some of them are probably dead or retired from injuries. Particularly if the war that seems to be slowly brewing, tumbling like shadows on a horizon, really does descend upon them all.

It's... It's scary, to think that Izuku must have lived through that. It's downright terrifying to think that he might still have been living through it.)

The time comes to leave for class, and nobody says a word when Izuku comes downstairs without a tie on, Whips creeping up from his collar and sleeves, steps that tiniest bit too long.

When some of another class, what looks like some of 2-B, give the class funny looks, askance and full of hushed whispers, from another one of the pathways towards the main school buildings, the class find themselves bunching up and around Izuku, trying not to be too obvious about it as they chatter and laugh and refuse to so much as glance again over at the older students.

If Izuku notices, and he surely does, then he doesn't say a single word about it, those dark eyes giving nothing much away.

Although, saying that, he does smile, just a little, achingly tender, reaching out to gently grasp the two hands closest to him, squeezing slightly. He gets several smiles in easy return. The class fully intend to support him, both in general and particularly today, when he is so clearly exhausted, shoulders slumped and fingers twitching.

And perhaps it's because of how tired he is today, but Izuku, admittedly, loses a little control during lunch. It's hard for them not to notice. By which the class mean impossible.

Because Izuku has tentacles all over the place and black-sparking skin, a supernova wrought of an abyss and a golden heart, some of his shadows seeming to form the shapes of hands or shoulders, fingers that clasp Izuku's shoulders, or reach out to gently ruffle the hair of his classmates, just about indistinct enough that it's plausible that it really is just shadows and aura and his Black Whips. Maybe.

Or, well, the class know that Izuku is very much not in the fullest control in this moment (and when two tables over were talking about Quirkless people with far too cruel a tone, too callous, as though real people dying is something casual-), but equally they're not going to call him out on that. Not when the Quirkists two tables over have shut up, eyes wide in how they stare at Izuku.

He stares right back, the void unblinking.

Someone, a business student judging by the uniform, leans forward from another table, not in Izuku's line of sight, tone blatantly hesitant, perhaps even concerned, except their eyes are gleaming a little too brightly,

"His Quirk, is he-"

"Is he what?" Mina immediately fires back, and another person stutters out a different question, sharper but also far less certain,

"Don't you think that's weird?"  The class don't hesitate to gasp and look confused and glance around at each other, only a few of them hamming it up to a melodramatic point, the rest taking it very seriously,

"What? Why, it's normal?"

"I don't see anything wrong."

"Izu-chan is just being himself, kero."

"Wait, is there something wrong?"

They have collectively garnered more attention now, but none of the class give a flying fuck, frankly. Izuku has yet to look away from the Quirkists, one of whom is visibly quailing. It's a glorious thing. Arguably a little questionable, but glorious all the same. The class certainly don't blame him for it.

Not to mention that they don't like some of the looks they're getting, the more judgemental or dismissive ones. So when one more person stands up to look at them all, scowling, accusatory, a way to make all of the class' hackles rise,

"He didn't used to be like that-"

"So? Doesn't stop this shit from being fucking normal," Bakugou snarls, hands popping just enough to be a blatant warning. The person who had been so fierce only moments before flushes, and sits back down, blatantly turning back to their lunch, one of the business students from earlier the one to reply,

"Uh, okay."

There are several more long seconds of various people staring at them all, then, eyes wide and narrowed in equal measure, unconvinced or confused, but none of the class care the slightest bit. No, they turn back to each other, and go right back to their foods and conversation. After a minute, Izuku's Quirk sinks back into something calmer, and people begin to stop staring. Well, some people. Other gazes continue to linger, unfortunately.

But Izuku doesn't seem to be bothered, in stark contradiction to, for the class who know him well at least, how he once would have quailed and flushed and faltered beneath the attention.

No, he just goes back to eating, carefully controlling himself from eating it all too quickly, yet still getting through three bowls of rice easily enough, his only seasoning furikake and the occasional sip of miso. It's very plain, admittedly, but he seems to prefer that a lot of the time now. And, well, from the glimpses of information they've been given, the little mentions and slips of the future that Izuku has lived through, they've gleaned that food was an inconsistent, low-quality thing for quite a while. And they know Izuku's nature; he would have gone hungry for others as much as he could afford to and even beyond that.

Despite everything, he is still so blatantly good. His friends cannot fathom Izuku being anything else, and it's a good part of what makes it so very easy to stand at his side like this, unwavering, unhesitating.

He's still their Supernova.

Debriefing Nedzu-sensei and Toshinori and Aizawa-sensei is somewhat disconcerting, Izuku can admit, the hint of deja vu a heady thing that sets his head to spinning. It's sort of nice too, though.

And it feels good, no matter the yawning chasm in his guts, to be able to talk about what he knows of All For One's operations, and of how they should be able to combat it this time around, with far more information about Nomu and facilities and plans. He and his mentors are able to pull apart the timeline of soon-to-be events, and of the potential of how they can tackle these various events and operations to avoid being obvious for as long as possible. The minute things begin to change, when All For One starts to pick up on their hunt and starts to adapt his own plans accordingly, their information advantage will begin to rapidly detoriate. It's a fate that Izuku is incredibly wary of.

If anything, his mentors are less wary of him. But Izuku remembers. He has learnt to trust, in the future, but he's learnt to lose too; he knows what it is to be on the backfoot, to be scrambling to so much as comprehend the front they're facing, let alone to effectively combat it. He remembers the complex schemes, and the ever-changing reality, and the unpredictable elements of so many different factions forming.

He knows that society cannot fall apart this time. Because the villains, the League and their Nomus, were dangerous. But the militia, the mobs, the complete and utter distrust, were lethal.

So when Toshinori suggests hitting hard and heavy, no matter that he's blatantly suggesting it for the sake of completeness rather than necessarily thinking it to be the most sensible option, Izuku can't help but lean forwards, grip on the table tight and dark-fingered, Whips beginning to shift restlessly.

"We can't. We need to build heroes into a stronger societal position again, we need to publicly condemn and deal with those who are corrupt, and we need to present a united front. If the public lose faith in heroes, we're fucked."  

He can't explain the heartbreak of looking a child in the eyes, and them flinching away from his extended hand. He can't put into words the horror of seeing someone so scared of him, of a hero, that they stumbled away and right off of the edge of a bridge, gone too quickly for him to catch.

Izuku has no way to parcel that up into something comprehensible, so he lets it bleed into the words that he can say, lets it frisson through him, an aura hanging heavier than the veils of death or the waters of the Acheron, a thing of misery and grief and fear so strong as to be choking-bitter.

(He does not know it, too caught up in the hands caressing his heart, trying to soothe him, in the glimmers of once-future scarring the edges of his sight, but Izuku is a... He is a dreaded thing to witness, in that moment.

His teachers look at him, and they see not a sixteen year old boy, nor even a young man in his twenties.

They see a ghost and a soldier and a mourner.

Izuku is a creature wrought of shadows, hair shorn short and skin pale and eyes wide, a night sky in twin mirrors, and there is terror to the tremble of his bone-bleached knuckles, to the hunch of his shoulders, the coiled tension of his muscles, the room illogically and impossibly heavy.

This is a person who has killed, and who would do so again if he had to, yet who fears the blood on his hands. This is a person who has watched his world fall apart piece by piece, and faces the potential of doing so again.

This is a person whom all three of them care for, and who they want to support, both because he is theirs, and because it will be for the benefit for everyone. So if he is scared, they know to be scared too. They know to try and help fix it.)

He is very relieved when Nedzu-sensei nods, sharp and certain.

"We will trust your judgement, and work to help you mitigate any bias."

All at once, the tension seems to snap, Izuku's shoulders rolling back until his sternum is unshadowed, pressed out in what could almost be called supplication, chain raised in what might otherwise be defiance, if not for the closed eyes and long exhalation.

"Thank you," he manages, words wispy around the edges but there all the same. Toshinori reaches out to, very gently, giving him time to pull away, lay a hand upon his shoulder, even as Aizawa-sensei speaks, voice grave and warm all in one,

"If you need anyone to rely on, kid, we intend to be the ones."

"We're here for you, Izuku-shounen. We trust you."

Something in that is enough, apparently, to have him crumbling into himself, shoulders shaking fit to shatter under Toshinori's kind hand, hands clutching at nothing until there is rough-soft-worn material in between his grasping fingers, enough to stop him twisting them roughly together, plucking at the familiar fabric-alloy instead. After a few minutes, there is the scent of jasmine tea, and he is vaguely aware of a cup being pushed across the table towards him.

Izuku, through his falling-apart, manages to smile all the same, knowing how lucky he still is.

Within a few more minutes, he has pulled himself together again, still clutching at the capture weapon in his hands because he can't quite bear to let go of it yet, even as he takes up sipping at the tea he has been offered, glad that his mentors are also drinking. It makes him feel a little less awkward.

Their conversation resumes from there, a gradual thing that slowly sinks back into very serious planning. They talk through some of the known Nomu constructs, and Izuku makes a decision that he hadn't even contemplated before today. (It's so hard to keep track of everything, to tell all of the truths but prioritise those most needed, let alone to even remember everything important. Some important facts are so old to him now, and it makes them no less significant in this moment but it's so hard to even realise that they are not known truths either.)

It's with this in mind, an ugly press of realisation against his conscious, that Izuku speaks up once more in a lull of their discussions,

"Aizawa-sensei, would you and Mic-sensei and Midnight-sensei be able to have a conversation with me soon? It... It isn't an easy conversation, but it needs to be had."  There are three heavy gazes upon him, things more of concern than of curiosity,

"Alright, kid," comes the reply, when Izuku doesn't explain anymore,
"None of us have patrols tonight, and Hizashi isn't due into the radio station until for a few hours in the early morning."  Izuku can't just let that be, because he only knows a fraction of how this affected his teachers in the first reality (timeline? he knows what he means well enough-) and he can't imagine it being any easier this time,

"Can he get a cover for that shift?"

"...He should be able to, yes."  There's undeniable caution in that reply, the words measured, and Izuku isn't glad for it, however it's sensible all the same, more's the pity.

Fuck, he doesn't want to do this.

But he would rather it was him than anyone else, all the same. There are surely more conversations like this that are going to need handling, there are definitely things he's still not considering right now, but he's exhausted and preoccupied and the thought of telling three of his teachers the fate of their own classmate... It's a lot already. 

So he's relieved, in a sense, albeit also reluctant in another that he refuses to let show, to be sitting across from his three teachers (he refuses to think about how they looked last he saw each of them, the images held at least a little bit at bay by kind hands that soothe at his tight ribs and aching memories, that help to distract him from the left-behind bodies that were once living, breathing, wonderful people-), with his fingers twisting together harshly enough to ache, even as they get the pleasantries talked through briefly, Aizawa-sensei cutting to the chase both before Izuku can get too worked up and long before he's ready to speak.

"I'm sorry to just dump this on the three of you, but I wanted you to find out from me first," he offers, not knowing how else to start. And Mic-sensei just smiles at him, only a little bit strained,

"Oh?"

"I know about your highschool friend, Shirakumo."

There's a moment of stillness, a tableau in heavy oils rather than light watercolours, thick and weighted and choking, before Aizawa-sensei is, unsurprisingly the one to speak first,

"That clearly isn't all you wanted to tell us."

"It's not, no," Izuku confirms, huffing to himself, reaching up press scarred thumbs fiercly against his temples, nails digging in a little more sharply than his heart-souls seem to like, judging by how there's a tug somewhere in his ribs that persists until he straightens again, 
"Shit, sorry, it isn't meant to be me struggling with this."

"You're the student, lil' listener, so don't worry about that."  They're all so very kind, even in this moment. It makes this hurt all the worse.

"I- Thanks Mic-sensei. I just don't think there's a sensitive way to say this, I'm sorry." 

"Just go for it, darling," Midnight encourages, and Izuku takes a deep breath. It's fine. This isn't about him.

"Shirakumo was taken by All For One, mostly opportunistically so, and they used his Quirk as the basis for a Nomu. For Kurogiri."

"Oh."  Izuku doesn't reply. It isn't his place to, he knows, as he watches Midnight's gaze sink to the floor, shoulders tense, or how Aizawa-sensei clenches his fists, eyes starting to burn, hair lifting at the ends. How Mic-sensei presses a hand to his mouth, cheeks gone bone-shard pale.

Years ago, they did not get to see the impact of this revelation upon their teachers. Not even after years, when some of the stories were retold to the class, was there a true sense of how awful, how utterly heart-breaking, such a thing was to them. Logically, they had all known how horrible it must have been. But, well. This sight, this revelation, is a shift of their world view, of the grief that they have had to live with for years.

"We- We found this out?" Mic-sensei asks, and Izuku has very rarely seen his eyes to be so raw, glossy with what could be tears and jaw so tense. It's an awful sight to see.

"Yes. He- Once Kurogiri was in Tartarus, it was figured out, although honestly I don't know how. Tsukauchi never told me."

"Detective Tsukauchi?" Aizawa-sensei asks, and there is something to his tone, in those few words, that resonates with the part of Izuku that is still nineteen and watching his home burn down.

"Yes, Sensei."

"Kurogiri is already in custody."

"Ah. Right." Izuku can't help how his words are flat, somewhere between startled and resigned,
"I didn't actually realise that he was already in Tartarus."

"He is," Aizawa-sensei confirms, and there is something ghost-held in his voice, utterly haunted.

Izuku really, really hates this.

"I can't offer you much more, and I'm sorry for that."

"Don't be, kid. It's not your fault," Midnight offers, smile blatantly forced. Izuku returns it, albeit a bit messily, and reaches up to run a hand over the top of his hair, briefly glad for its shortness before he's focused on the room once again.

(Although that, in itself, is a dangerous thing, because thinking about Aizawa-sensei and Mic-sensei in relation to hair is far from a pleasant thing. Not when he can still hear the beyond-rage howl, a hoarse thing of wolves and widows, not when he can still taste iron upon his tongue, can still feel the way that his very ribs are gouged, pain so great to be going numb, blood bubbling in his every breath, even as he watches a neck break with the force of a gold-torn tug, a sickening crunch-snap too loud and deep for comprehension, even as he watches one of the people he loves most in the world lose themselves, in an instant, to a grief so deep it is their entire being-)

"If I remember anymore, I'll let yourselves or Nedzu-sensei know. Do- Is there anything I can do?"  There's no way for him not to offer that, and whilst it wasn't his intention it does at least get him a softer expression from Aizawa-sensei, one that is a relief of sorts to see.

"Thank you, kid. Genuinely."  He can't pull words as far as his lips before Mic-sensei is speaking as well, a smile disconcerting upon his too-pale face,

"Shouta's right: thank you. I'd rather find out from you than elsewhere, lil' listener."

"The boys said it, Midoriya-kun."

"Of course. I-"  He cuts himself off, not wanting to apologise again. His own emotions on this shouldn't be a burden upon them all, he knows.
"I'm glad it could help at all."

"It did, kiddo. You're fine, alright. Now go and get some actual rest for once."

"Yes, Sensei."

He leaves them, then, glad that they at least have each other, and that he knows he told them in a way that was at least close to kind, as much as such news could ever be. Izuku can only be glad that he has done his best. 

...Maybe he really will go for a nap.

Chapter Text

Izuku spits blood, even as smoke billows out from him, thick and blinding.

There's a long, ragged line of a wound down his arm, an ironic parallel to a wound he got only three years ago (five or six years in the future, but whatever-), but he doesn't have time to think about that right now, not really, when he would rather check that the two heroes who have been dragged into this fight by pure accident have gotten away from Dabi's flames.

Fuck, but he doesn't like Touya being alive again. The bastard.

He should probably figure out how and if he's going to tell Shouto about Touya, actually, shouldn't he? A problem for another time. Like his own mother. And talking to Toshinori about Nana. And- Well, none of that matters right now. He's getting lost in his thoughts again.

But at least the two heroes (he's sure one of them is called Trapler, their Quirk vaguely akin to Honenuki's, but the other one... Gate, is it? Gates? Izuku is fairly sure that they died in the early days of the war, and they were always a local hero that he had little knowledge on in the first place, but they seem like a decent sort-) have gotten clear, their figures back away, nearer the alleys that they had originally used to approach the warehouse in the first place.

Which means that Izuku can go batshit. Good.

The third's Quirk is still one that Izuku doesn't like to bring to bear, but it's worth it, right now, particularly if he can take Dabi out now, prior to the worst of the crowd fighting-

Things start to fracture, a burst of wind rushes away from the area in front of Izuku, then there are three full seconds where the world seems to implode, bluebell flames crushed down against the ground, flaring a white so pure it looks black, negative space and visual agony, a blast of superhot air that scorches Izuku's skin despite the Whips that curl around him, protect him.

The ground is left molten, fractures that are soft and smoking at the edges, and still it continues to give way, to sink further. In its midst there is something taller, except it isn't right either. There is the curve of shoulders, sections of fabric that cling to bones that have burst right through skin, staples gleaming in blood and the faint light of the twilight. There are no flames to reflect off of them, now.

Everything in front of Izuku has been crushed into itself, beyond-pressure impressed upon it.

But that isn't enough, in all truth. Because Dabi is blatantly dead, not to be callous about it, but bones don't curve that far out of a body of someone that is alive, not even in a Nomu like that of the USJ, doubly so when there is so much grey and red and yellow splattered across the scorched ground.

Perhaps the sight of a burst eye inside a fractured skull should bother Izuku, and in some part it does, but he equally does not have the time or space or innocence to be fully or truly disturbed by the sight.

In lieu of focusing on the body, Izuku bursts towards the warehouse, intent on detaining anyone else that might need dealing with.

Detaining ends up being killing three more people, admittedly. Two of them are a genuine accident, in a battle-sense of the word, a thing of Izuku crashing into the warehouse, feet-first through a wall try to ensure that he can't be ambushed, except it means that two random villains, grunts judging by the fact that he doesn't recognise them at all, are caught in amongst the flying rubble, a bloody temple and a broken neck between them. And maybe the former wouldn't be dead, but Danger Sense isn't registering them as a single thing, unlike a lot of other things in this warehouse.

But Compress is the only thing actively moving, other than a few more low-levels. Izuku twists to avoid the shards of crystal that shoot towards him, landing lightly on the balls of his feet only to flip up and over once more, headed straight for Compress.

The man's cane comes up, trying to intercept Izuku and his blows, the villain's other hand reaching up behind that cane, clearly looking to try and grab at Izuku, to activate his Quirk. Judging by his cry of a stranger with a far inferior mask, he hasn't recognised Izuku, for the better. Good to know that his combination of lower face mask, no visible curls, and a hood pulled up to shadow his face is doing its job.

Perception also does its job. Because the attack that was reaching for Izuku's own moving limbs seem to waver, to shift, all at once aimed several inches to the side. He misses Izuku entirely.

But Izuku doesn't miss him. No, Twist grins viciously behind his mask, and he lets his heel crash into the villain's ribs, sending them careening back with an unfortunate crack. There's a second crack, a more shallow-sounding thing, when Compress strikes into what looks like a medical table. Ah, his mask has split partway. Oh well. Izuku really struggles to care. Particularly when he's already whirling further forwards, pivoting on the spot to crash another kick under the chin of one of the grunts, then promptly using a second as a springboard to head back towards Compress, who is busy flinging three marbles at Izuku.

It's easy for him to ricochet from one marble-turned-massive shard of rubble to the ground and up to a heavy metal contraption of some sort, flipping before he bounces off of it, momentum building up with Float's help-

Compress steps to the side to dodge Izuku, except it has him moving just right, thank fuck for Perception, to be in the perfect position for Izuku to sling his legs around the man's neck, ankles locking, knees held in close and tight and choking. And when Compress reaches up, gasping, fingers twitching slightly as they shoot up to grab at Izuku's legs, it's easy enough to let his Whips slip free of his sleeves for a few moments, yanking the limbs back down with enough force that the pair of them, as one mass, topple over, headed for the ground.

Izuku takes most of the fall on his knees, which hurts like a bitch but was both a necessity and an expectation, but it also winds Compress, Izuku's heels digging into his solar plexus and sternum.

It only takes a few more moments, the villain's hands trapped beneath them both, for him to pass out entirely, face red-purple from what Izuku can see beneath the cracked mask.

Izuku simply cracks an elbow down on the villain's temple, made easier by the way that the top hat has fallen off at some point in their fight, and disentangles himself, wincing slightly at the stinging pain of his battered knees and, actually, now that he thinks about it, the left one might be fractured, because there's an agonising shift to it now that he's putting a different sort of weight on it and is actually processing it.

It's not like he can do anything about it right now anyway. Not when he has to make sure that the other villains about to cause any fuss, and that none of the Nomus here are active. There aren't any kids here either, for better or worse.

It's far later, technically the next day, when he slumps into a seat, surrounded by several of his teachers. Outside the windows, the sunrise has already given way to yellow-swept blue, the day truly started.

Fuck, Izuku is too tired for this. And aching. He might have actually evaded Recovery Girl so far, but he knows that he won't be able to for much longer. Particularly with the knowing, vaguely-warning looks that some of his teachers are levelling him with. But, for now, he pretends that his leg isn't throbbing with his definitely-fractured kneecap, one that has admittedly been worsened by searching through the warehouse to take copies of any and all particular evidence, doubly so with then travelling back to UA, because using Whips to make a support-stroke-splint for his legs, and using Float at least a little to help ease his movements, can only do so much.

And after Nedzu-sensei has greeted everyone and introduced some of the very basic points of the need for this meeting, he waves a paw at Izuku, who ducks his head for half a second but doesn't stand up like he normally might have for a larger debriefing like this.

"So, some people died during my patrol last night."  There isn't necessarily shock in response to that, but spines straighten and attention is clearly wholly upon Izuku,
"I killed them. One was Dabi, formerly Todoroki Touya, two were unknown low-level villains on-site, and the fourth, who might be alive but I believe is dead, was Compress, whose civilian name I don't remember, if I ever knew it. He was the one who helped kidnap Katsuki during our training trip," he adds on, clarifying for those in the faculty who look slightly more confused on that final name.

None of the teachers condemn him on the spot for the deaths that he caused. None of them immediately tear him apart with questions. None of them look at him with disgust for the actions that he technically, in half of the cases, could have tried and likely succeeded at avoiding. (They understand, Izuku knows. He knows in tales told of their own first kills, stories told in reassurance for a class who were, person by person, finding their own hands bloody in a way that could never be taken back, could never be forgotten.)

And so Izuku continues talking, wanting to get the arguably-more important information in now that the potentially messy part is technically over with.

"I attacked this specific warehouse-"  He nods to Aizawa-sensei when the man accepts a pile of papers form Nedzu and passes them down and across the table for people to look at,
"-because I knew it was active around this time previously, and that it was a location used for manufacturing Nomus. I've been staking it out over the last week or two so I knew they were due a delivery of some equipment tonight, and I managed to catch it at a time when they had extra guards in for some shipments; I figured it would either be some active Nomu or some of the main League members, and Dabi and Compress were both there. Unfortunately, Doctor Garaki wasn't, but I'll explain more about that later."

He drags in a deep breath, rolling out his shoulders and refusing to wince when his knee twinges viciously. The not-there hands in his curls helps balance him out a little, at least. Ground him. (He really does love his soul-parts, his constant companions-)

"There weren't any children or other so-called Quirk repositories at the site, only half-made or inactive Nomu-"  There is something like horror to that, but none of the heroes interrupt Izuku. He's glad for it, in all truth,
"-and little by way of Garaki's notes or the like was there. But Compress, to our theories last time, was one of their main ways of getting the powerful Quirks in at this point in time, with All For One partially incapacitated himself. And Dabi... Shit, Dabi is unhinged and fucking lethal. I won't lie, I'm glad he's dead. He took out a lot of innocent people, and damn good ones too, last time."

There's a natural pause then, one that Izuku comes to because he wants to give the heroes a chance to ask questions or pick him up on anything that is confusing or illogical.

And it was worth leaving that pause, clearly, because Cementoss is the first to lean forwards slightly,

"Not to derail you, Midoriya-kun, but you said that Dabi's civilian name was Todoroki Touya? Should we be concerned about those implications?"  

"Shit. Right, yeh."  It makes sense that, thinking about the timeline, that would catch them off-guard.

Oh, fuck, they're not the only ones who weren't already aware, are they?

"I think it's safe to say that there are a few important conversations that need to be had with some people," he says, as he gathers his thoughts, scrambles to think of other things he has missed,
"The Todoroki family need to be informed of both this and other information pertaining to Touya. He was their eldest child. They think he's dead-" His breath shudders in his lungs, the death throes of something feral,
"I'm sorry, I was so caught up in thinking about Kurogiri that I forgot. There's just so much, and I couldn't, I didn't even think-"  He's spiralling, he knows, the whispers in the  back of his mind escalating, rising into a crescendo that is clearly meant to help and it does, a little, for all that it also takes Mic-sensei humming an oddly specific and perfect note (a very familiar one, one that Izuku has definitely relied on before-) to help him force his breathing to settle again, or to begin to at least.

He'd like to not fall apart this morning, if it's all the same to his trauma, thank you very much.

"Kid, don't apologise for this sort of shit," Aizawa-sensei interjects, before Izuku can apologise for falling apart a little bit,
"We can deal with it."  

"I-"  He doesn't get the chance to protest, the hero already interrupting, not unkindly so,

"No, kid, listen to me for a second, please."

Izuku forces himself to drag a deep breath in, then, a shuddering thing that clings to his throat in a genuinely painful way.

"Sorry. Listening." Nobody picks him up on the barely-coherent response, and Aizawa-sensei leans in a little closer, settling his arms upon the table, all in a way that drags every part of Izuku's attention in, that forces him to focus.

"Thank you. Just to be clear, kid, we're not expecting your memory to be perfect. Nor your morals to be immaculate. We know you have lived through a war, and that changes people."

"As long as you'll still hold me accountable if I go too far," Izuku returns, because he doesn't want his trauma to be an excuse for him to become the monster he fears part of him already is. He doesn't want to hurt people. He knows that his perception has already been twisted, that he can see a pool of blood or protruding bones and not falter, still wanting to make sure someone is okay, but not fazed at all by the horror of it the way he should have been. The way he once was.

He knows that parts of him are irreparably fucked up.

So it helps, it helps a lot, to have one of the people he trusts most in the world to look him right in the eye, unflinching of his darkness and his changes, and to words that are so unyielding yet so soft, so sure,

"We would."

"Good," he returns, emphatic, stressed-syllables, and utterly relieved.

(Some of his fears fold themselves up, corners still sharp but taking up so much less of his chest with their chill-touching creases, warm hearts beating around his own in a way that draws the unpleasant frost away.

Izuku is mostly okay, he thinks, in spite of everything. In fact, he thinks that maybe a lot of things are okay, or will be, and that he doesn't have to be alone in trying to ensure that. )

There are decisions that are made then, discussions of who will talk to the Todoroki family, discussions of how the teachers would like to make sure one of them is always patrolling near where Izuku will be if he intends to potentially raid locations, doubly so if they're going to be warehouses full of Nomu, active or otherwise. Izuku cannot argue with them on that front, frankly. He has learnt, through blood and bones and his friend's guts spilling upon the ground even as electricity fizzles around them all, the scent of ozone sickening, that trying to save the world alone is a burden meant only for fables, because when Izuku tried to do the same, more than once because he is stubborn to a deadly fault, it left only deaths and desperation in its wake.

He trusts these heroes. He trusts, too, that he needs them, that to do this alone would be a condemnation for more than just himself, and he cannot stand for so much as the mere possibility of that.

So he agrees with the plan that Mic-sensei and Nedzu-sensei will be the ones to talk to the Todoroki family, that Izuku will not have to, although Izuku also insists that should Shouto ask, he can be told that it was Izuku who killed Dabi, or even if he doesn't ask. Izuku doesn't want Shouto to not be aware of his actions. 

Because it isn't long later, in fact it's only the next day, after Izuku has taken a single day off of school to sleep off a scolding and a healing from Recovery Girl, and has joined his class for an evening of watching films that he admittedly, dozed through, never more than half awake at any given moment, that Shouto comes into the dorms sometime after lunch, sees him, and pauses. Except he doesn't flinch, doesn't scowl or sob or even really change much, and Izuku doesn't think it's only his blank expression to be thanked for it. Not when those eyes are also steady, unflinching and no more upset for the sight of Izuku than they were before.

He doesn't stand up and approach Shouto, wanting to let him make the first move, but he is pleasantly surprised when the teen does actually walk towards him.

"Do you want to talk?"  There is no pause before Shouto nods,

"I think so, yes."

"Would you prefer one of our dorm rooms or the roof?"  Izuku wants Shouto to be comfortable for this. He remembers, perhaps not well but strongly all the same, just how much emotional and social growing his friend still had to do when they were all fifteen, despite the brilliant progress he has already made.

Although to be fair, Izuku at fifteen was also pretty awkward or oblivious half the time. He still is, in new ways, but oh well. That really isn't his focus right now.

Not when they're headed up to Shouto's room, and Izuku still cannot regret killing the monster that he knew, but he will mourn Shouto's hurt all the same. Touya was his brother, even if Dabi had grown far from exactly that.

They're sitting down soon enough, each taking a corner of Shouto's futon so that they can look at each other properly, heterochromatic eye steady, no tears or tremble to be found,

"I- Midoriya, I do not blame you for your actions."  Izuku revels in the relief that seeps, ivy-creeping and oh-so sweet, between his ribs, even as he forces himself to continue listening.
"I trust your judgement, and to my knowledge of Dabi, he was cruel at best. I..." Shouto's abruptly-shuddering breath resonates with an ache of Izuku's own, but he doesn't interrupt,
"I would rather that you were alive, and that he could not hurt any more people."

Izuku is very glad for that, it has to be said. Equally, does he entirely trust it? Not necessarily, and it's no reflection on Shouto, really, but he still has to press at least a little, to be sure that his friend is sure,

"Oh. Thank you, Shouto. I wouldn't blame you for being upset, though. Genuinely," he presses, not unkind or sharp, no, just soft and certain instead. Open. And yet Shouto simply shrugs,

"I... I never really knew Touya terribly well. I don't remember him particularly. I think I'm only grieving the idea of him."  Izuku certainly can't blame him for that.

"That sounds understandable."

"I suppose so."

Whilst the conversation trails off there, it isn't uncomfortable per se. Izuku lets himself relax a little, glad that Shouto is comfortable with him, glad that he seems content to just exist with Izuku for a time. (Shouto does not know it, but they have spent hours and hours like this, pressed shoulder to shoulder or across a small fire or each on a medical cot, just settling together in a silence that neither of them need to break, the simplest companionship that really means so much to them both, that has no expectations or pressure or need to be okay-)

Shouto has always been a wonderful friend, perhaps more so than Izuku ever deserved. He is good and loyal and steadfast, and his insane theories never fail to make Izuku laugh, circumstances-regardless, even the ones that have a grain of truth or are perhaps a little bittersweet. He knows that ever since a single text with a location and a fight in an alley, Shouto has come to his aid, has fought by his side time and again and yet once more, without fail or falter.

Izuku remembers all too well what it is to be without his best friend, and he never wants to experience that again.

He remembers how ink-lashings tore their way out of his arms, and how Izuku screamed, iron on his tongue to match the ground, but all he can see, even now, is that image, over and over and over, embers to ash to flame, and Shouto is gone-

His skin has permanent pockmarks and streaks and shine after that, even though they still have Recovery Girl. It takes too long to get back to the location where she's holed up.

But Izuku bears those scars as a reminder to himself, as a pledge, as a fond memory. Shouto died in his arms, his best friend lost to yet another moment of sheer cruelty, but that isn't the only thing about Shouto it is there to remind him of. (Shouto was good, and kind, and he loved to connect dots that had no place being connected but he did so with a gleam in his eyes and Izuku could never begrudge it. He wasn't perfect, not by any stretch, and Izuku adored him even more for it.)

Izuku, by then, was already too-used to grief. Shouto's death hit him far harder than most all the same, more than enough that he can admit he fell apart a little. Or a lot. But, well, he hopes, now, that he has prevented exactly that, at least in the immediate term.

Izuku could go a thousand lifetimes without watching his best friend burn to death in his arms again.

Chapter Text

It's a news story that prompts his attention. There's nothing overtly significant about the story, either, something that is quite normal albeit unfortunate, just a story about a semi-random civilian who had gone on a Trigger-fuelled rampage.

And, fuck, Izuku needs to do more about Trigger, doesn't he? He's been taking out some of the bigger local dealers in recent weeks, but the use of that is limited, ultimately. People will always get replaced, particularly when things like this are so profitable.

(He knows far, far too well the horrors of someone tripped up on Trigger, doubly so once the American variants started to get imported and then produced in Japan, plus the Villain Factory never really died, not helped at all by rising competition of different variants, distributors who would cut their Trigger with other drugs alongside-

It's no wonder society began to fall apart when it only took a single breath for a person and their Quirk to go berserk.)

With all of this in mind, Izuku finds himself asking Aizawa-sensei, post a Heroics Law and Ethics lesson, if the hero would mind joining him for an impromptu meeting with Nedzu.

"Sure, kid. One second."  Izuku stares out of the window without any bother, watching some people moving to settle on the lawns. Looks like some of the seconds years are sparring.

They're headed into Nedzu's office only minutes later,

"Good afternoon, Izuku-kun, Shouta-kun."

"Nedzu."

"Hi, Nedzu-sensei," Izuku concurs as they each take their seats,
"So, we don't have an antidote for Trigger yet, right?"  It's a rather abrupt start, admittedly, Aizawa-sensei's head whipping back to him, and Nedzu pausing slightly in how he was pouring them all some tea, although he continues soon enough,

"Correct, Izuku-kun. May I ask why?"

"You already know that it's one of the biggest things that ruin everything. And there is an antidote that got developed, but the League ended up attacking the facilities developing it before it could get widely distributed or used because they wanted the chaos of it. Not to mention the sheer number of deaths."

Nedzu dips his head slightly in acknowledgement, tail twitching,

"Indeed."  Izuku manages something of a grin then, even if the shadows of it stretch long and aching,

"Well, I may or may not know the chemical formula for both Trigger and its antidote."  

"Kid, what the fuck." Izuku shrugs a little, an edge of genuine amusement to his expression for even half a breath at Aizawa-sensei's flat incredulity.

"We spread the knowledge and made a point of memorising it in case we were ever in a position to be able to get it mass-manufactured again, particularly once Mo- Well, anyway," he interrupts himself, shrugging a little, carefully ignoring his own hitch of breath and jerky movement,
"Trigger- Trigger was a fucking disease, there were kids born that were fucked up by it, and too many innocent people ended up killing others because they were injected with the stuff without any choice by random villains. It was a perfect distraction. A perfect destruction, really."

Izuku doesn't mean for there to have been a wobble creeping into his voice, there. It's something that he can't help, however, because he- It's just heart-breaking to truly think fully about how their world fell apart in fits and starts and tumbling rubble, in the blood across a child's cheeks and the slump of a hero's shoulders.

Before he can pull himself together or fall apart, Aizawa-sensei reaches out, hand moving oh-so slowly, to press his palm against Izuku's shoulders, pausing slightly before he lets his fingertips settle as well. The consideration of that, tiny though it may technically be, means ever so much to Izuku, doubly so with how the man has blatantly considered the fact that so many of the known villains have touch-based Quirks, Shigaraki well-included. He gave Izuku the chance to move away. The chance to protest.

It helps Izuku to not actually need said reassurance, honestly, the fact that said consideration was taken at all. Aizawa-sensei is just so good. 

Not to mention that his hand is warm and heavy in the best sort of way. It is an anchor upon Izuku's half-bared soul, a match to the hands of heart-bound companions that are also trying to soothe him, butterfly-gentle against his ribs. (He... Izuku doesn't want to think about the worst of what he has lived through; he doesn't want to think about so very many things, because they are the way his hands broke to catch a falling friend and how his index finger never truly moved fully again after that, or the way that he walked into an alleyway hoping to save a screaming little girl except she had already gone silent, and when he scooped her up, there was no breath yet to be heard, nothing but fading warmth and ribs that broke beneath his desperate attempts to not let her leave, to change fate for the sake of one gorgeous little girl who didn't deserve this-)  Izuku lets himself breathe deeply once and twice and a third time again. His Whips begin to die down, although he hadn't truly noticed them start to writhe in the first place.

Regardless, he doesn't stop those deep breaths for a time again yet. No, he lets Aizawa-sensei's reassuringly heavy hand ground him, until he can get back on track, thoughts gathered to something coherent once more.

"Right, okay, so. So." Izuku flashes a tiny smile at the hero when Aizawa-sensei retracts his hand once more, and he continues talking, ignoring the tremble to his own ink-ash-abyss-stained fingers,
"Trigger is an issue that is only going to get worse." It's a statement with all the weight of a hundred-dozen deaths behind it, each and every single one of them heard clearly.

"If we get Momo to produce the first batch or two, rather than synthesising it in a lab, it'll be easier to reproduce it beyond there."  Nedzu lets out a little chitter-hum of a noise, a thoughtful thing that Izuku well recognises,

"I do know of a few labs that would be willing to produce a drug, particularly if we can patent the drug." 

"We should be able to, yes. I'm not sure how we'll present it or its creation, honestly, I haven't had the chance to think about that just yet-" Before Izuku can so much as begin to spiral, however, the creature is leaning forwards a little bit, beady gaze gleaming,

"If I may, Izuku-kun, I am happy to take that aspect over. If you can write down the formulae and ingredients relevant, anything you know regarding both Trigger and its antidote, I would be glad to take the majority of the logistical and theoretical weight, should you be amenable."

"I don-"  

Izuku catches himself. There's a reason he told his teachers and his class about the fact that he time-travelled, and there is a reason that he has continued to be honest still. There is a reason that he hasn't protested anytime that Aizawa-sensei or one of the other teachers lingers along his patrol routes as Twist. 

Izuku cannot succeed alone. In the short-term it's a doable thing, but he has condemned both himself and others by stubbornly refusing help before. (He has killed with it, exactly two times, and he refuses to let it be a third-) Knowing that he has a choice doesn't change the fact that there's only one good option, in all truth, and so he forces himself to nod, no matter that it's an aching, grating thing,

"I would appreciate that. But I would also like it if you could share information on any labs with me? I might have forgotten some names that could crop up."  Both of the teachers stare at him for a full breath, before Nedzu-sensei nods, moving to pour himself more tea,

"But of course, not an issue at all."  Izuku breathes deeply just the once, and manages to offer a tremble-edged smile, one that hurts but is also genuine, smoky fingers clutching the edge of the table fiercely enough to threaten to break it entirely,

"Thank you. Really, thank you."

"And to you, Izuku-kun." It is serious, albeit gentle, enough that Izuku relaxes a little.

"You are allowing us to do things that would not have been possible otherwise."

"They shouldn't be necessary," he returns, not-quite intentionally, yet Aizawa-sensei grimaces slightly, a soft, reluctant scowl of sorts,

"I won't disagree with you, kid, but you know better than most how the world works," it is not an unkind statement, simple an acknowledgement, bittersweet though that makes it,
"At least we can do something about it."

Huffing an admittedly-disgruntled agreement is the most Izuku can manage, before he's reaching out for a pad of paper and a pen, already starting to scrawl things out, chemical formulae and word after word after word of so many details that might matter this time once again or that might not, Izuku will have to wait and see, but if the baseline knowledge is there then it's a better start than what they might have otherwise have had.

It gives Izuku hope for what will happen, for how things will progress this time.

Hours later, Izuku is shrugging on an armour-layered hoodie that he may or may not have pseudo-commissioned from Hatsume, already walking out of the lift as he settles it into place.

"You off again, Mido?" He flashes his classmates, or the ones gathered around the living are at least, a smile,

"Yeh, don't stay up, it'll be a late one," he advises, wry for all that it's still serious. A few of the class furrow brows or frown in blatant concern, something that is warm-resonating in Izuku's chest,

"We have that exercise tomorrow, Izuku-kun, please try not to wear yourself out too much."

"It'll be fine, but thank you."  He has no way to explain to his class just how much he has torn himself apart in the past-future, that he knows intimately the minute to minute, the moment to moment dissolution of his being, where his breaking points are and the way the fragments of his being fall and cut and kill-

He has no way to explain that, nor any desire to, they don't need to hear such things. Izuku loves his class far too much for that.

So he grabs some snacks from the cupboards, shoves them in his bumbag that is tucked neatly beneath the hoodie, and says goodbye to them all easily enough, mind already swirling with what he, or rather Twist, needs to get done tonight.

Primarily, he needs to get some samples of Trigger. It'll be far more useful for Nedzu-sensei and whoever ends up working on the Trigger antidote if he can get some samples. Hm, maybe he should try and track down some of the American variant, it was far worse at that point and likely is now too but he isn't honestly sure if it's even been brought over and distributed yet. Maybe he'll do some extra staking-out and stalking rather than arrests, see if he can pinpoint some of the hubs and networks... That sounds most logical.

Speaking of logical.

"Alright, kid?"  Izuku pauses so that Aizawa-sensei can reach him with speeding up at all,

"Hi, Sensei. You following along tonight?"  There's no resentment nor zeal to his tone, only an easy enquiry, and Aizawa-sensei is similarly neutral.

"Depends what you're up to," the man shrugs, immaculately casual,
"Midnight's patrolling in some of your preferred areas tonight so if you've got light plans then she'll be close enough should anything go wrong. If not, well, I'll come along."

"I'm not planning any raids or owt, just some following, maybe try and nick some samples." 

Aizawa-sensei stares down at him for several moments even as they head steadily towards one of the side gates, neither of their paces faltering in the slightest,

"Fair enough. Let Midnight know if you're going to go beyond her patrol borders, and do me a favour and send her a text every half-hour too, location included."

"Is she expecting these texts?"

"Yes, and if she doesn't get them we'll all be coming to find you."  Well, that's suitably non-negotiable, at this point.

"Understood."

Aizawa pauses just long enough to look Izuku directly in the eye, shadows against shadows except Aizawa-sensei's are kind and warm, enough so that Izuku can smile genuinely, openly, golden threads unspooling around his heart. (He's beyond lucky to have these people back, to have even the faintest chance of saving them all this time around. He couldn't be more grateful.)

"Right, off you go then. Don't get caught up in some massive clusterfuck," Aizawa-sensei dismisses, half-heartedly flapping a hand at Izuku, who flashes him a grin,

"No guarantees but I'll do my best, if only for your sanity."  The hero returns his grin, just as wry, just as toothy,

"That'll do. Don't forget you've got an exer-"

"Exercise tomorrow, yep. Momo reminded me."   

There's a slight pause, Aizawa-sensei faltering slightly, smile fading except his eyes stay ember-warm, no need for his Quirk,

"Good. Be good, be safe."

"You too, Sensei."  The man opens his mouth as though to say that he will be, but thinks better of it. Izuku appreciates the acknowledgement, indirect though it may be, of the fact that UA isn't always a guarantee of safety.

Izuku shuffles off then, shifting his pace to try and get warmed up a little bit pre-emptively, leaving UA with a brief wave to one of the unhidden cameras near the gate, knowing well that Nedzu-sensei will be keeping an eye on him through bits and pieces of CCTV tonight, as he knows that the creature does every single time. 

It's honestly kind of nice to have so many people looking out for him. Okay, true, it's also a little bit stifling at times, Izuku won't lie, because he has long-since learnt to be independent to a literal fault, and he hasn't ever forgotten that no matter how much he has taught himself, time and again, to try and rely on other people. But he's just grateful to have people to worry about him again, in all truth.

(He has spent years losing his loved ones person by person. Over time, he has had less people able to care, and they have all had less time and emotional capacity to so openly show their complete concern. They knew their constant dangers.

They all cared, with a lingering grip that was tight enough to draw literal and metaphorical blood, ever-more desperate with every other loved one lost, but equally there was a mutual understanding, a knowledge that they could only afford to much literal back-up with their time and energy stretched so very thin, when their numbers were so low that they could barely do anything at all in more than a pair without risking other things beyond the point of safety-

It's a wonderful thing to be able to afford to care-help-support in every way once more.)

Regardless, Izuku spends his first half an hour just travelling, so he texts Midnight once he's crouched upon a rooftop, shifting subtly from side to side to keep a slight stretch going rather than seizing up in the lull period, shoving his phone away and waiting, immaculately patient.

Identifying common dealing points hasn't been difficult, and Izuku has been careful not to snatch most people at the specific spots to try and prevent them from being moved, and it is paying off today because he only has to wait twenty minutes to hear the sound of someone coming into the alleyway below him. He hasn't really taken the chance to follow anyone all the way back to any distribution bases before, so tonight will be an interesting experiment. Although, saying that, it might well take several nights, knowing Izuku's luck.

Oh well, he'll survive. He's staked out far worse places for far longer before. (He'll never go back to those damn sewers, fuck you very much. They were rancid, and he got sick from it, and they barely even got any reward from it because the smugglers moved out of the sewers before they could even try to action their plan.)

He spends hours like this. Huddled up in his hoodie, stretching whenever he has the chance, texting Midnight and then Aizawa-sensei occasionally, sticking always to the shadows and making full use of every snatch of shadow-sneaking skills that he has, the not-quite chatter in his chest from eight people who largely have far too much to say even if when he is awake like this and not using One For All the words don't quite register as such, Twist stalks first one then a second Trigger dealer.

But then it's three in the morning and he's two hours from home, and the person has disappeared into a building of flats that is definitely just a normal one, judging by the glimpses he can see into various homes and of the bikes and matts and plants left out on the balconies.

He knew it might not be easy to identify a warehouse or other storage-slash-production space, and that it was unlikely to happen in a single night, but it's admittedly still a disappointment. At least, if nothing else, he has years to technically try and mitigate the devastation he lived through, no matter that the sooner things are addressed, the better.

For now, he makes his way back across the city, enjoying the pre-dawn light that begins to seep into blush tones as he gets closer to UA, the sun rising somewhere to the right of him. It has long-since been a sign of comfort for him. Because it meant they got through another day and maybe it was hell and maybe tomorrow will be even worse, but there is still that impossible, ugly, painful glimmer of hope that just always refused to let them all go.

He gets back, exhausted, but that's okay because he flops onto his bed after dumping his hoodie, knowing that his phone's alarm was set well before he even left last night so that he won't be late, and he's confident that he won't sleep through it at least.

Izuku does indeed wake up to his alarm, and a quick shower and change of clothes doesn't have him looking presentable per se, but the advantage of shorn-short hair is that it doesn't get tangled, at least. And when his eyes are all-black, the bags under them kind of don't look as bad. Kind of. Maybe. If he happens to use Black Whip to do a lot of reaching around his room for things, collecting a tie and his rucksack and opening doors, just to save him the effort of lifting his arms to do those exact things.

He's tired, what can he say.

But he gets through the day. Just shoving some dry toast down his throat is enough to technically give him some energy, although he manages a weary smile for when Aizawa-sensei holds out not one but two nutrient pouches for him. And they're both kiwi flavour, too.

"Don't get used to it, kid."  Despite the grumpy tone, Izuku can't help but keep his smile, tired though it may be,

"Thank you, Sensei."

"Just take a nap, Problem Child."  Then there's a hint of a Cheshire grin,
"If you snore, I'll let Bakugou be the one to wake you up."

"That's just cruel," Izuku calls over his shoulder as he turns on his heel to walk to his seat, the put-out edge to the words only a thin veneer over his idle amusement.

It only takes him all of maybe five minutes to settle at his desk comfortably enough to fall asleep, head pillowed on his arms.

The class cannot help but glance over to Izuku every so often. Checking on him is both needed and natural, just to observe the steady rise-fall of his chest, the way that one of his Whips has slipped out of his sleeve to shift slightly with every breath in a way that is somehow kind of adorable? 

He is still their Supernova, no matter how his fingertips have stained in something like charcoal and his eyes have become nought but a night sky. Even if his freckles always gleam a little too brightly until it's dark and they become bloody abysses in pinprick form. Because he still wakes up and smile at them all, albeit a little lopsidedly, mussing a hand through his barely-there curls, and most of the class still find them smiling back at him, or nodding, or at least not actively scowling at him, which for Katsuki is frankly something of an achievement, although he has been far more mellow in the last month or two anyway.

Well, that isn't the point. Because, for now, they all have normal lessons to get on with, and if the teachers don't call on Izuku, no matter that he's awake and just about taking notes, then nobody is actually annoyed by it.

Nor are they annoyed by how Izuku disappears at lunch time. Equally, the faculty aren't aggravated by the technically-teenager who appears in their room to flop down onto one of their sofas, sleeping just-curled on his side, something borderline defensive to it but, equally, Izuku is sleeping soundly within about half a minute, the occasional little snuffle escaping him when he breathes out. It's rather sweet. It's made even sweeter when Toshinori tiptoes over with one of Aizawa's many blankets in hand to drape over the not-kid, and Izuku blinks awake.

Except he doesn't startle, doesn't flinch. No, he just blinks two, three times, and manages a sleepy approximation of a smile that is far cuter than his otherwise eldritch features should be able to be.

Before he promptly flops back down entirely, eyes already closed again. Toshinori's face is positively molten as he gently drapes the blanket over their student, not quite tucking it but rather carefully anchoring just the corners beneath pillows so that it won't fall off without being too restrictive either. It's an absolutely precious sight.

The faculty are glad that Izuku can be safe and comfortable enough here to sleep so easily.

Chapter Text

Toshinori died as he lived: a hero.

He is with Izuku now, still, even though Izuku is also standing right by him; they are plotting to fight, and he knows how Toshinori aches to not be able to directly do so himself.  (But he is still very much a hero in every way that matters, and Izuku will never allow him to think otherwise, not when he can still feel the lion-like heat in his chest from his mentor who did everything he could for them all.)

"So are we all happy to settle on this plan for the time being, pending any possible changes should circumstances change?"  Izuku nods and murmurs his agreement in amongst the quiet chorus from the rest of the gathered heroes, nobody dissenting, for better or worse. They've already spent literal hours hashing out these details and overarching theories already, the majority of their Saturday lost to it, and it's well worth it but, equally, it's exhausting too. Wearying.

Izuku just really, really wants to sleep.

Unfortunately that isn't an option just yet, however, because they have the goodbyes and have a good evening to get through, and then he goes over to thank Nedzu-sensei properly, albeit briefly, tactfully ignoring just how assessing the hero's gaze is upon him because they both know full well that he's emotionally pulled apart right now, but they also know that very little is to be done about that. There's no point bringing it up. Not when it's very much the weekend and Izuku has already agreed that he won't do anything the next day. Or, well, not much anyway.

And given how genuinely exhausted Izuku is, how his bones ache and his eyelids drag and every breath seems to grate against his throat, rasping, he thinks that he'll keep his promise.

It doesn't hurt at all that, when he gets back to his dorm (and the fact that Toshinori and Aizawa-sensei walk him back, no matter how unnecessary it technically is, is ever so sweet, ever so kind, such a bitterly treasured thing-), the class are there to greet him, smiling and fretting and just looking content. Safe. Tsuyu and Jirou, already making tea, immediately get another mug down from the cupboard at the sight of him, the taller girl passing it on to the other to pour into, and room is quickly made on one of the sofas, in between Ochaco and Shouto, more than enough space for Izuku to sit there, just between them.

He has tea in his hands and two of his very closest friends either side of him within a minute. There is some film on the telly that he vaguely remembers but that Mina is telling him is new and so he smiles, and settles back into the sofa, and when his friends shift closer, and Kirishima and Kaminari sprawl at their feet, he lets himself relax once more.

It's like this that Izuku sips at his tea (and it's not his favourite, but it was prepared by the hands of some of his favourite people, a fact which makes it wonderful all the same-), paying a bare minimum of attention to the film that's on, moments of the love interests dancing, or of the antagonist laughing, of the best friend rising with a bloody temple and victorious smile. He watches, revelling in the whispered comments and the flashes of an elbow nudge and the little laughs at whatever goes wrong. It is simple, and it is perfect.

It's also rather relaxing, it has to be said. At some point, kind hands take the empty mug of tea from his loose grip, and shoulders press lightly against his own. Izuku can smell sakura shampoo and popcorn and something warm.

He's asleep without so much as knowing it.

After a time, he knows it, and he's drifting to some level of awareness, albeit only a vague one, still drowsy enough (and exhausted enough-) that his eyelids are Atlas-sky weighted, his limbs much the same, and he breathes slowly, calmly, deep enough that he can feel the swell of his ribs, how they press up against warm hands, the sigh of soft words against his heart.

There's a hushed voice then, except it's louder than everything else, not from within his chest, and Izuku would blink his eyes open but, frankly, he's tired. Very, very tired.

"Is he asleep?"  The voice is soft, kind. Familiar. He doesn't need to open his eyes.

"Shh, you might wake him up."

"He definitely seems tired."

Izuku wants to tell them not to worry, but he's too far gone, lost to the sweet-soft lull of his class' quiet noise around him, of knowing that they are safe and so is he.

He loves his friends so, so much.

Gasping, Izuku ducks a wave of what feels like lava, ignoring how there are little spatters of burning weight that catch over his back, and punches someone closer to him in the jaw, glad that he's wearing gloves, if only for the sake of not damaging his hands even further, particularly as there are knuckle-dusters inserted into them, halfway-fingerless though they may be. It doubles his damage, and lessens how his hand aches from it. He sends one more person tumbling to the ground with a bloody nose and shattered wrist.

All at once, before he can gather his thoughts much more at all, there is yet another wave of people pouring out of the warehouse, already hollering and heckling, weapons and Quirks bared.

"Who are the fuck you?"

"Motherfucker-"

"Why are you here?"  Izuku lets himself grin slightly beneath his pulled-up mask, skidding to a stop for a blink of a breath,

"Name's Twist! And I think you know why."  He's already moving again, side-stepping a shower of projectiles, green and glowing and sharp, ducking a flying kick, and then he lets Black Whip lash out as it is so hungry to do, tugging at ankles and wrists and Quirk appendages, sending villains stumbling and tumbling and catching each other with attacks meant for him. (Plausible deniability is a wonderful thing indeed; until the day that Midoriya Izuku the hero student is publicly and widely known to have an evolved Quirk with inky tentacles, or until Twist is no longer a power needed for his plans, he can keep these fleeting coils of Whip free and sharp and dangerous. Nobody can prove a thing, and that's exactly how Izuku likes it.)

All at once, Izuku is bursting forwards, throwing himself into the crowd in a flurry of kicks and crashing knuckles and elbows settling into throats or guts or wrists. Not only that, but he pulls out cable-ties, clever little ends of Whips helping to tighten and secure them without being particularly obvious at all, working to restrain people rather than bashing them over the head where possible. Because, no, none of them are innocents, but equally they're not exactly the monsters of this world as Izuku understands it, and he has more important things to worry about than concussed people, either way, but if he can restrain them, he would rather it, particularly when Danger Sense isn't registering too many potential issues. Izuku doesn't need lethal force right now, or hopefully even anything too close to it.

With this, he sinks into the rhythm of the fight. He ducks, rolls, leaps, spinning around and lashing out and relying almost solely on his own strength and speed rather than Quirks. Well, he uses the odd flash of Float to just make his jumps or twists the tiniest bit more than they should be, a minute difference that wouldn't be obvious even to those watching, but when someone is actively trying to predict his movements on instinct alone, it throws off the tempo of his jumps.

It's going well until there is a sharp prick somewhere on his shoulder, one that Danger Sense very much picked up but that, for the sake of not getting stabbed in the guts by a knife instead, attention torn and Whips preoccupied with strangling one person and keeping away two others, he could not dodge, unknowing of what exactly it could be, but at least it wasn't a dagger deep in his abdomen.

However, he knows within a breath what has hurt him. It isn't difficult, neither in terms of logic nor how something within him starts to swell, to figure out exactly what has just happened: Izuku has been injected with Trigger.

Well, shit. 

Izuku isn't instantly panicking per se, but he feels close to it, doubly so with how One For All is whirling, growing, within him, trying to push out his ribs, sparking embers into blazing fire-life in his very marrow, and it is wrong. Not only that, but it's far, far too much.

"Twist!"  Thank fuck that his back-up has turned up at all, and doubly so for this exact moment because, yes, Izuku trusts the heroes he knows, and admittedly it would have been more useful if they'd turned up, say, about thirty seconds ago, but oh well. Izuku is a bit too busy trying not to lose control, right now, to really care much more.

No, he's busy stumbling away from the villains, nigh-on backing himself up against a wall, hands already clutching at his head, digging in, trying desperately to focus on the souls within him that are trying to help him, to work past how everything inside of him is trying to implode, in fits and starts and all at once. There is no breath in his body, no coherence in his mind, and the ground is starting to crack around him, Whips pulling at his arms, reaching out and curling in and fighting against him.

Every instinct in Izuku is howling to not lose control, to curl everything that he is into himself once more, to contain the supernova inside of him.

It hurts. Fuck, but it hurts, beyond any physical pain that Izuku has ever experienced before, the entirety of a lightning storm raging against a tsunami, a mountain falling apart, a drought upon the shifting face of a desert-

Izuku sobs, because even beyond that, within it, he can feel how his predecessors are being torn apart too. He can feel the spasming of their fingers and the abruptly-growing swell of their shoulders pressing out at his ribs, can hear their cries of pain, of frustration, and they're trying to help all the same, their kind, desperate fingers scraping at his guts and bones as they try to rein in their own Quirks, to help him, except it's almost an impossible task.

Because Izuku is Floating, and the very air around him is fracturing, no oxygen in his lungs, every sense screaming at him, and he- he doesn't know what to do.  All he knows is that there are people that he cannot risk hurting, and Pressure is flaring up, Float is refusing to stop bobbing him in the air, and Izuku can only hope that Perception isn't affecting anybody who might still be fighting below because his own eyes are firmly shut, a scream-torn sob still on the tip of his tongue, the ferrous taste of rotten blood acrid and bile-threatening.

Something snaps. One, two, three, four things, each after the other in rapid succession, and Izuku honestly cannot tell if it is his ribs, his mind, the vestiges, or something else entirely. It, seemingly impossibly, makes things actually hurt more.

Sparks sear at his skin, something that could be explosions if they were microscopic, and whatever breath Izuku might have had left is stolen from him, writhing in air-strung place. It- it feels like he is dying, and he knows that he isn't, he's come close to that before, more than once, and there isn't the fading-out, but there is the agony and the confusion and the way that he wants to beg but refuses to because if this is how he goes then so be it-

He hopes that this isn't hurting his soul-sharers as much as it is him.

Eventually, things change, in tiny flashes of an almost-breath, of the rictus easing for a jaw-loosening moment, the ebbing and flowing of the agony giving him brief reprieve yet making the full-on return so much worse, his nerves peeled and picket and pulled, his scars, old and new and never to exist again, throbbing in violent arrhythmia against his heartbeat, discordant and disorienting.

At some point, his control over One For All begins to... stabilise. It isn't particularly good, isn't entirely certain, but it's better, closer to normal. 

It's enough for him to lace his hands together, feeling fingers around his own that aren't there but very much are all the same, and to breathe fully, no matter how it aches and makes his straining ribs feel about to burst.

And, finally, Izuku tumbles to the ground, beyond exhausted. He can still feel the way that his heart-companions are struggling, how they are heaving for non-existent breath, how they are grappling with the sparks in his veins and the beasts gnawing at his bones, how Yoichi is curled around Izuku's very heart, the push of his knobbly spine against Izuku's ribs, and the gentle curve of his hands and heat of his breaths.

His family have done their best for him, and Izuku isn't sure he would have survived this without him... In all truth, he really, really doesn't think he would have. Or that the people around him would have either.

(Izuku knows, with utter, horrific certainty, just how terrible this could have been. He has seen building upon building levelled by someone hopped up on Trigger; he is fully aware of how powerful One For All is, of how Pressure and Whips alone could decimate entire kilometres of urban landscape, or mountains, even without the effect of Trigger... If everything is turned up, is overpowered, then Izuku... Izuku isn't sure how much he could do, if there would be earthquakes and thunderstorms and so much death that it would become a miasma in the air, so thick and dark and ugly as to be visible, tangible, a cloying thing against his skin-)

But now they have taken one massive, significant step towards preventing Trigger from becoming the horror that Izuku once knew. He might have actually done something to help prevent the nigh-on apocalypse of society that he and his loved ones lived and fought and died through, and he didn't even do too much damage in the process of it. He kept control, with the help of his soul-companions, his predecessors, and things went well.

Izuku collapses into sleep that night with a smile on his face, eight warm hearts against his own, and hope blossoming against his breastbone, no matter how Recovery Girl's Quirk has him pulled straight into darkness with a dull ache.

Things really might be different. With just one more major step, now, Izuku truly might be able to believe in a better future.

Chapter Text

Maybe he has changed, maybe things have gone wrong, maybe he's missing parts of who he used to be, but Izuku isn't the sort to give up, no matter what has happened to him, no matter how much he doubts himself.

And now that fact is paying off.

Because, here, now, they have a plan to change a major part of their country's fate, of the fate of people that Izuku adores, and he is steadfast in his hopes for this. He is absolutely and realistically aware of how wrong this could go, in fact Izuku has spent hours upon hours (yes, often when he should have been sleeping, but he has slept a lot in the last day to make up for it, or so he hopes-) trying to pick apart every possible point of turn, every single thread in the infinite tapestry of this fight, the interwoven blood and bones and horror of it all. Murphy's Law is beyond a bitch, and he has been burnt by her hand many a time.  

But this time, as with many before and yet even more so than any of those occasions, Izuku believes that he may have genuinely done enough to try and prevent those mistakes or wrong turns. He thinks that this might be the leap off the cliff that doesn't lead to salt-burning breaths and a burden of grief so great that it was less a thing of drowning and more one of consuming, of losing himself so utterly that even his scars seemed foreign, the sky as grey as the cracked roads and the dust seeping into the seams of his knuckles until they ached and itched and bled-

Hence finding himself here, now. He is prepared, his Quirk humming beneath his skin, the reassuring caresses of his loved ones within it, and he has weapons tucked in his belt and teeth sharp where he runs his tongue over them and, when he catches sight of himself in a glint of metal or window, his eyes seem impossibly wide and dark, twin spilled-pool ink, the reflection of distant stars in their darkness.

Izuku looks a little like the monster that he fears he has become; in this moment, he is unable to care about that fact. 

If being a monster is what it takes, today, to change the future, then so be it. If he dies, today, then that too will be it. It would be worth it. Izuku would only hope that, if he went today, then his family as he knew them, from the souls beside his own to the people he lost in a future that no longer exists beyond himself, would be there.

Hopefully, however, it will be a while longer 'til he joins them, if only for the sake of not causing grief for the people who love him right now (and, admittedly, Izuku would like to truly, officially be a hero, something he never really got to have before now-).

Izuku isn't nervous. Not like he should be. No, that deadly calm that writhes paralysing ivy around his bones has settled upon him, ice in his veins and not a single ripple in his mind.

"Everyone ready?"  There is a chorus of replies, all nods and enthusiastic yells and far more usual calls in response, and Izuku is glad when nobody pauses for more than a blink. It's encouraging.

Without much more time at all, they are all approaching what will be the battleground, every other minute only seeming to last a breath, the time fading, spiralling, shuddering away to nothing at all, and seemingly in mere moments, there are villains, and shouts, and the fight is starting to descend.

Izuku begins with smashing an elbow into a random person's face. And rapidly follows it up with a flicker of Whips, an inch-light of Float, smashing two people together and wrenching at another shoulder. The pop of dislocation doesn't have a single part of him faltering. Not when he's preoccupied with twisting beneath a kick from some sort of elastic-stretching leg, careful not to slip on the puddles of dark oil that are bubbling up from seemingly nowhere at all. Float keeps him safe from it, although he can feel the heat of it all, as though pulled straight from the core of the earth itself. The air beneath his feet is wavering, just a little, from what must be a heat mirage.

He keeps on fighting, keeps on ducking and spinning and lashing out, unrelenting, unwilling to give in. Yes, he has a goal, but he cannot yet complete it directly, and the more people he deals with, the less that other people have to contend with.

At some point, there's a distant glimpse of Aizawa-sensei, a blink of ragged-immaculate movement and of eyes that are red in perhaps more than one way, and Izuku is already snapping at a hand that has gotten too close to his face too quickly, some sort of impossible thing that is surely a Quirk (he remembers a limb teleportation Quirk, somewhere between Kurogiri and that child who had hopped from place to place constantly and yet something else all together, and this feels similar, the abrupt presence of a strike that even Danger Sense can hardly keep up with-), his teeth that little bit sharp as he catches them around flesh, not flinching from how the fingers scrape at his face even through him biting through several tendons and muscles.

The fight continues for what might be thirty seconds or might be three minutes, before he sees Shigaraki.

In a single, still moment, their eyes meet, and neither of them falter before they're rocketing forwards, twin yells and a thing of scattering people, heroes and villains alike trying to get out of the way of Izuku's Whips and sheer pressure (he isn't even using Mental Pressure yet, not whilst so many people are still so close, because even most of the villains here do not deserve to die if he can afford it-) and Shigaraki's weight of death, of bloodlust, all rot and dust and decay.

Their clash is an ugly, hectic thing, spittle on cheeks and glinting eyes, nails digging in to air and flesh. There are fingertips that try to catch on Izuku's limbs with ragged nails and a deadly potential, and sometimes they catch, but equally Izuku's own punches are landing. And his elbows, and his knees. It's a savage fight, bordering on animalistic, lacking both in grace and in rhythm; it is far from the battles in which Izuku has faced Shigaraki before.

But there is structure, of a sort, because Izuku has a plan.

A Whip, low, short, subtle at Izuku's hip, pulls forth the syringe, wrapped in its shadows so that it cannot glint, and in amongst a storm of dark lashes, it stabs forwards, Shigaraki thoroughly distracted by the punch aimed at his jaw and the foot that snakes out to try and tug at the man's ankle.

It means that he has enough of a chance to shove the needle deep into Shigaraki's shoulder, where there are muscles and arteries, more than enough to have the drug straight into his bloodstream, and taking rapid effect. 

Is it instant? No, of course not, but with high adrenaline and with Izuku still fighting him, snapping bloody scrapes at the corner of his jaw when Shigaraki's flinch from the syringe draws them closer together, bringing a knee up to crash into the villain's guts, it works.

It works well in fact, maybe even better than he had dared to hope his plan ever could.

Because Shigaraki is stumbling back under the breathlessness of the knee he took to the solar plexus only moments ago, and Izuku doesn't push the initiative, instead faltering back as he heaves in three rapid breaths, far deeper as though he's tiring out, as though he needs the oh-so brief respite.

As though he is a teenager terrified of death, of risk, of what he might do, of what might be done to him.

Twist-Izuku-Supernova, however, is twenty four or maybe twenty five, they actually all lost track for a while and never really regained it, and he is not scared of death. He loathes it, begrudges it, wishes it was not necessary for all that it so often it is, and will forever remember the deaths he is caused, that he has allowed.

Shigaraki's death is not a death he will regret.

And to that end, Izuku waits. He watches as Shigaraki wavers on the spot, as he scowls and flexes his fingers, as he seems confused about why he is more bothered by relatively minimal injuries and why something else is wrong.

Until he realises, something shatter-bright in his gaze, and a rage so viscous-fierce it could be a shuddering slide of rocks, and he screams.

Shigaraki without his quirk is not a defenceless thing, he is not bereft of all danger.

But he is weakened. Vulnerable. All of the destruction and death and derision he knows best is sapped and twisted, to leave him with nothing more than bared teeth and clawing hands.

It is with those exact things that he leaps, once more (always once more, never giving in, never willing to release victory from his bloody grip-), hands reaching for Izuku and Izuku may have taken the Quirk from those fingertips, but he could never hope to take the violence.

For now, quite simply, he instead intertwines his own Quirk with his bones and heart and mind, only a faint thing of aurora that weaves sparks upon his freckles, upon the ashen mars and deep-valley scars of his hands, and he lets his head drop back, throat exposed, eyes slipping closed, Float high-sinking him away from the ground, rising until there is nothing but air and noise and emptiness around him, a figure against the sky, above the blood and bodies, that is either a divine saviour or a cruel devil.

Shigaraki, fearless of any such things, leaps from below. And Izuku, eyes still closed, throat still bare, sparks still a sweet agony, lets a smile that should be a sob settle upon his lips as Danger Sense screams, whispers, creaks in the back of his mind, a familiar friend.

His grip, for all of its trembling scars, are strong.

Of all the deaths Izuku has seen and caused and felt, it seems fitting to him that Shigaraki’s would border upon inane. Unremarkable, certainly, in the lack of blood and the casual sprawl and the half-closed eyes, too glossy and too dull all at once.

In the end, all it took was a broken neck, and what a bitter irony that fact is.

Izuku lingers long moments before he leaves Shigaraki's body where it lies; he watches the still chest, the partway-open eyes, the lack of twitch to those fingers that, only seconds ago, not even full minutes, were utterly lethal.

Then he rolls his shoulders out once, murmurs a gratitude to the eight hearts crowded around his own, and turns to the rest of the battle, to the villains still fighting, still hurting his allies. It is not a state of affairs he can simply do nothing about, no matter the momentous instance he has just gone through himself.

When it is all over, when the arrests have been made and the bodies taken away and those of them from UA returned to their home, the world feels surreal. Distant, perhaps. And Izuku doesn't mean to collapse. He really, truly doesn't mean to; he tends not to let himself fall apart until he is alone or just with some of his closest friends, his family, and yet in this very moment Izuku has no control at all of the way that he cracks right down to his very core.

It's abrupt, how he feels cleaved apart, raw flesh and nerves and heart, his knees giving way beneath him. Shigaraki is dead. The League are gone.

His sobs are ugly, awful, painful things in how they claw in glass shards up his throat (there are gentle hands soothing along his neck, pressing along his cheeks, arms curling around his shoulders, his waist, his side, trying to comfort him, to remind him that he isn't alone, that they have all survived, together-), and he is left helpless but to give in to it all, to let the entire weight of grief slew over him, torrential rain and glorious sunshine rolled into one, too much, far, far too much, yet something beyond welcome.

Izuku-Twist-Supernova has won, in spite of it all. He almost can't believe it.

Except he knows immaculately what a dead body looks like, what it is to see a person with not a single iota of life left in them (he has seen such a thing wrought at Shigaraki's very own hands far too many times-), and Shigaraki is fucking dead, and All For One is rotting in prison, and Izuku has done it. He's actually fucking done it.

He isn't even aware of the people around him, leaving Danger Sense and Black Whips to protect him (it isn't necessary, not here, not now, not surrounded by his class and mentors-), as Izuku falls apart, bones cracking open, marrow raw and vulnerable and left to cringe-ache-scream in the cool air. This- This is the result of entire years of agony, of person after person, loved one after loved one, falling victim to Nomu and sickness and mobs who looked at heroes and saw monsters. The world has fallen to ruin around him, no matter his desperate clutches at the rubble and gone-slack hands, but now... Now it doesn't have to. 

Admittedly, passing out isn't how he expects the crumbling-apart to end, but at some point the crushed-close eyes fade into darkness entirely, and Izuku is left to blissful nothing.

He wakes a time later that he isn't the slightest bit aware of, darkness blinking away to dim light and a pale ceiling, the rings of a pale curtain pulled around him, a just-soft mattress beneath him, a blanket under his fingertips.

"Midoriya-kun, good to see you awake!"  Izuku blinks heavily once more, some of the grogginess lost as he starts to push himself up onto his elbows, getting his arse under himself to sit up entirely, waiting out the head rush from the movement, slightly aggravated by how it makes it difficult to listen to Recovery Girl, because she's still speaking but she isn't making any sense to him, background noise to the point of being unintelligible.

But then he's aware and awake and able to listen as she talks to him, telling him that he has no injures, albeit he has some heavy, lingering exhaustion, and that the others are fine, or at least recovered, and that it’s over, they did it.

Izuku almost bursts out into tears all over again at that, utterly overwhelmed with just the thought of it, because it doesn’t feel real. Or even possible, for that matter.

Recovery Girl can definitely tell that he’s overwhelmed, given how she stops speaking and instead slowly reaches to pat his hand, just once, smiling slightly in that soft-sharp way of hers, understanding a shimmering veil over her gaze.

”Try and relax a bit, Midoriya-kun. If you want I can call some of your friends to see if they’re free?”

”I-” His voice gives in almost immediately, but he clears his throat before the heroine can even think about moving to get him any water,
”That’d be nice. Thank you.” It’s very grating, a little slurred-soft around the edges, but it does the job well enough, from how Recovery Girl’s smile deepens a little.

He listens with, frankly, less than half an ear as she calls what is presumably either the dorm phone or Aizawa-sensei’s mobile, judging by the mentions of the man’s name.

Izuku is less distant when there’s a great clamour of noise echoing down the corridor to the infirmary, all of them familiar and accompanied by a rush of equally familiar footsteps. His friends, and Aizawa-sensei, and Toshinori.

Izuku is ever so lucky, truly.

That thought lingers with him as many of his favourite people in the world come tumbling into the room, the class at his mentors’ heels, and he can only smile at them, drinking in every pair of bright eyes and uninjured limb and word of happy, relieved greeting, a tremble to his fingertips and a dawn-sweet joy to his nine-beating heart.

And maybe Izuku isn't sure if they've done enough, honestly. He has no way of knowing; the very moment that he was cast back in time, things changed, irrevocably so, and he has no way to know if this is a separate timeline or his own or a cut-off loop or really anything else at all, but he knows that things, here and now, have changed for the better, to be able to have moments like this.