Chapter Text
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
The topic came up at dinner, casual as anything. Hizashi posed the question to some of his first year students in the form of an extra credit essay and was… gossiping, for lack of a better word, about their responses.
“Listen,” Yamada said, gesturing wildly with his glass. “I’ve had some pretty wild kids come through my class, general education gets the widest variety, but this girl, I mean, monetized ship blogs? Is that an actual career path?”
“If the essay was thorough and thought out, probably.” Aizawa muttered with a shake of his head.
“The internet is a fascinating and terrifying place.” Izuku said, slipping a small piece of fish from his dinner to Goose. Once he’d stopped being scared of her, the cautious gray cat had quickly wrapped him around her paw. If the adults minded the extra treat giving, they hadn’t said anything yet.
“Mmm.” Yamada snapped his fingers. “That reminds me, we need to get you a laptop.”
Izuku immediately made a noise of protest. “I have a phone, and I borrow yours when I need it.”
“Exactly, which is a lot. And that’s probably going to increase, depending on what you want to do about the whole school situation.”
“We should talk about that soon, are you up for it now?” Aizawa directed the last part at Izuku, who thought about it for a moment. Yeah, he was probably okay for that.
He reached down and picked up Goose, settling the cat in his lap, and pushing his plate just far enough away that she couldn’t reach the scraps. “Sure.”
“It’s good timing. This semester’s wrapping up, it’d be a good idea to get you into some sort of school for next.”
“You should be going into your last semester of middle school, right kiddo?”
Izuku nodded. “If I’d done the whole regular school thing.”
Yamada nodded. “You’ll probably have to take some placement tests.” He said with an exaggerated look of disgust.
Izuku hid a smile, and Aizawa rolled his eyes. “Do you think you can tell us about your education history?” The man asked, clearing the table and slipping Goose another tiny snack as he passed.
“Uh, well, let’s see.” Izuku tilted his head back in thought. “I went to pre-school as normal, I didn’t get a chance to go to elementary school though.”
Yamada’s pinched frown at that made Izuku a bit indignant for some reason.
“It’s not like I wasn’t educated. Giri tutored me and Tomura for years on typical school stuff, and well, some not so typical school stuff.” He was pretty sure basic weapons training wasn’t covered in school gym class. “It stopped when Tomura aged out, they had more pressing things to do. But preteen me was kind of pissed, so I enrolled myself in middle school online. Fake name, of course, managed to hide it from my father for almost three months.” Izuku frowned at the memory. Of Tomura’s hand on the laptop screen, pinky lifted, but moving down ever so slowly, Izuku doing everything in his power to keep a straight face as frustration, anger, and ever present fear swirled around deep in his stomach where he could control them. Izuku shuddered.
“Thankfully he didn’t make me drop, just gave me a whole lot more work to do. Probably the only reason I didn’t finish everything in a few months.” He continued. “It was a move at your own pace sort of thing, so I finished up maybe a month or two before I first ran into you.” Izuku nodded his head towards Aizawa for the last bit.
“That’s…” Yamada trailed off for a second. “That’s good then, you should be on track, right?”
Aizawa nodded. “Do you want to try to find a middle school for your last semester or wait for high school?”
Izuku shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. I can’t exactly access those transcripts so I’ll have to test anyway. Might as well take a placement exam and see if I need the middle school bit or not.”
“That’s logical.” Aizawa pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Looks like there’re a few public tests coming up. How long would you want to study?”
“Umm, at least a week or two please? It’s been a while since I’ve thought about this stuff.”
Aizawa scrolled some more. “Sixteen days, we’ll get you that laptop. And Zashi, think you could pick up some study guides tomorrow?”
“Yup!” Yamada wrote himself a little note. “It would be nice if you didn’t have to worry about middle school, most kids your age are prepping for high school entrance exams right now, and trying to find two schools at once won’t be fun.”
“Not that it isn’t manageable.” Aizawa shot his husband a look. “And worse case scenario, you wind up behind a year, nothing wrong with that.”
Izuku blinked at the words “worst case scenario” and resisted a startled laugh. The worst case scenario in his life was his father finding him and subjecting him to one of the numerous fates-worse-than-death he had in his arsenal. Being a year behind in school didn’t even warrant a place on the list of things he worried about.
He stroked Goose slowly, using the feeling of his fingers in her fur to keep himself present. Hanako noticed his tendency to zone out during hard conversations and gave him some strategies to avoid that. So far Goose was the most effective, but he was working on other ones since she wasn’t always going to be around. After quickly evaluating his emotions, Izuku decided he was overwhelmed by the amount of information he’d shared in one short conversation, and excused himself to his room for some alone time. He’d mentioned Kurogiri and Tomura in passing conversation before, the more mundane aspects of their lives, but it made him nervous every time he did. As if one, little, insignificant crumb could lead to a reveal he wasn’t ready for.
Izuku plopped on his bed, keeping Goose tucked between his chest and pulled up knees. He’d put together a study schedule before bed, maybe skip a run or two in the coming weeks to make sure he had enough time. He had two teachers for guardians as well, it would work out just fine.
“What do you want to do with your life?”
Izuku had to put his notebooks on the shelf above his desk to have enough room to study. Yamada went a little overboard and came home with three separate study guides and workbooks and Izuku was determined to make full use of all of them.
Thankfully most of it was easy, definitely review. He only occasionally saw words or concepts that were unfamiliar, but upon digging it was usually just because he knew the topics under different wording.
Any nerves he might have had about this test dissipated as he continually aced the practice ones, letting his guardians grade a few just to make sure he wasn’t skewing the short answer and essay portions in his own favor. Both of them seemed to agree with Izuku’s competence, which was nice, but it did mean that they’d gone full hover parents when it came to high schools.
“Do you have any idea what you want to do?” Yamada asked, laptop open at the table one Saturday, as Izuku studied.
“Hmm? In terms of high schools?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of careers, knowing what you want to do in that aspect can really help narrow down your choices.”
Izuku swallowed hard, discomfort worming around in his stomach. “How so?” He asked, if only to stall for time.
“Well if you’re thinking something more blue collar, you might want to go to a trade school rather than a standard high school, or one with good connections to trade schools on the collegiate level. If you’re more science minded, or artistically inclined you can go to a specialty school where you still get all the basics but spend a lot more time on certain subjects. That’s technically what UA is, you know.”
Izuku nodded, fiddling with his pen, silence dragging on as it waited for his response. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know.” He said, his voice just a bit uneven.
Yamada seemed to pick up on it, and reached out to rub his back. “Hey, no, it’s okay kiddo, you don’t have to know right now, most kids don’t.”
Izuku nodded, taking a deep breath. “Okay. I guess… I’ve just never actually had to think about that before, you know?”
Yamada looked heartbroken and Izuku cringed internally. “Yeah kiddo, I get it. Why don’t we look for something well-rounded, hmm? Give you lots of options.”
“That sounds good.” Izuku replied, not entirely sure if it did. It felt a little aimless to do that, like a cop out, to not have any long term plans. But considering up until a few months ago, he was living on a day to day basis, he couldn’t really blame himself.
Assuming that everything he had right now wasn’t ripped away from him at a moment’s notice, what did he plan on doing with his life? Izuku doubted his odds of making it to adulthood for such a long time, but on the chance he did, what they hell was he going to do?
Any fleeting thoughts of the future when he was living at the bar usually involved finding a way to gain distance from his father while still firmly entrenched in the criminal underworld (he never saw a way out until Aizawa offered one). Most involved him using his analysis skills to shift into information brokering, maybe eventually earning enough from that to live on his own and work adjacent to his father rather than underneath him.
But that was as far away from his position at the time that he’d dared to hope for. And now, however unlikely it still was that he’d make it to adulthood, a whole slew of possibilities were open to him. How was he supposed to reconcile that? How was he supposed to handle going from no options to all the options?
Izuku sighed and rubbed his face. Might be a good thing to bring up in therapy, he half chuckled to himself.
He was still thinking about it later that night, staring up at the ceiling from his bed, hands folded over the covers. How do people decide what they want to be? Izuku didn’t think there was anything in his life that he ever wanted to do. There were things he liked to do, but like and want are two very different words. To try and get past this block in his brain, Izuku decided to pretend, just for the moment, that the two words were equivalent in this situation. What did he like to do? He liked… going for runs… petting the cat… and analyzing quirks. His father may have soured the last one over the years, but it was still something he’d done plenty of in the last few months. He found it was the most satisfying use of his time, and quirks were really cool so he kept it on the list.
There wasn’t much you could do career wise when it came to running. Izuku wasn’t fast enough to race competitively, and that didn’t sound appealing. But maybe that told him something that could help narrow things down? Like… that he wanted to be outside. There were lots of jobs people did out of doors, that was a thought. He liked Goose, despite taking a while to warm up to her, maybe working with animals was a good idea? That went along well with the outdoors thing, but he had next to no experience with animals outside of Goose, and most people who worked with animals had a certain knack for it. He’d have to try it out before committing to something like that, and he’d have to learn a lot about the behavior of whatever animals he worked with to make sure he wasn’t a ball of tension like he was around a simple cat when he first met her. The idea made him a little nervous, so maybe it wasn’t the best option, but there was no harm in digging into it a little.
That left quirk analysis. His work in that area so far had been criminal in nature, analyzing heroes to give Father and the League the upper hand in their enterprises. But he knew Heroes used analysts too, and his guardians had said his analysis was already on the professional level.
Izuku rolled over and grabbed his phone off the nightstand, typing in a few searches on his job prospects there, and scrolling through the results. It looked like some hero agencies and the police force employed analysts. A few other similar jobs popped up as he looked around, like quirk consultants and counselors. That would be cool, helping people improve or get used to their quirks. And he didn’t doubt he’d be pretty good at it too. He saved a few links for later. This didn’t line up exactly with being outdoors or working with animals–unless he wanted to study animals with quirks? That might be cool. Most quirked animals didn’t have anything too crazy, the most powerful one known was Nedzu, the UA principal. Hadn’t Aizawa said once that he didn’t want his boss and Izuku to meet? Why was that… Izuku kind of wanted to now.
He set his phone down and got comfy again, letting his thoughts spiral around on the subject. Both his guardians reassured him earlier that he didn’t need to decide on anything right now. It was perfectly alright to take things one step at a time, go to a standard high school, figure things out from there. But if the dozens of notebooks Izuku’d filled to the brim in his life were anything to go by, he knew that having the headspace and the hope to finally plan for the future meant he was most certainly going to. And he was going to go overboard with it.
He fell asleep smiling.
“Who do you want to be?”
Aizawa drove him to the testing site. A very large public school that volunteered some empty classrooms from what Izuku gathered.
The man offered to walk him in, but Izuku shook his head.
“You really don’t need to. I’m not worried, I’ll see you after.”
Aizawa nodded. “Do your best.” He said in a surprisingly encouraging monotone.
Izuku offered him a small smile and headed in.
There were a few signs that led him to a little check in table, set up in a quiet hallway. A middle aged man who looked nearly as tired as Aizawa sat on a fold-out chair, a cheap paperback in one hand and what Izuku assumed was a list of names in the other.
“Uh hi.” He said, fiddling with the pencils in his hand. “I’m here for the test?”
The man thumbed down the corner of his page and looked up. “What’s your name?”
“Aizawa Mikumo.” Izuku said evenly. He may or may not have been practicing saying it, and he was planning on asking his guardians to use it occasionally too, so he got used to hearing and responding to it.
“Okay Aizawa, just a few quick questions for the form.”
He asked a couple standard identity questions. Birth date, age, etc.
“Quirk?”
Izuku blinked, wondering if maybe kids with intelligence quirks were given a different test or something… though, quirks were usually listed on ID cards so maybe it was in the same vein as the other questions.
“I’m quirkless.”
The man blinked up at him through bushy, graying eyebrows. “Looks like you’re signed up for the wrong test.”
Izuku frowned, having double checked all the information Aizawa forwarded him several times a day for the last week. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s a simple mistake, there are two tests to get out of middle school, this one’s placement, for kids going to high school, the other one’s a degree equivalent, to be done with your education.”
Izuku hesitated, confused, feeling like he was missing something obvious. “I am, planning on going to high school, that is.”
“You found a high school that takes quirkless kids?”
Izuku stiffened. An “Oh,” of understanding catching in his throat. He’d almost forgotten the universe was stacked against him on multiple sides. Not just the villain father and the criminal history. No, he was useless by coincidence of birth.
It was strange how easy it was to forget about his own lack of a quirk, living in the apartment. Neither hero used their quirk in the house, except on rare occasions. He’d seen Aizawa’s eyes glow with Erasure maybe two or three times, and Yamada slipped up and went a little too loud a grand total of once. It was simple enough to feel like he was on even footing with the quirked when he didn’t have Tomura’s hands as a reminder, or Kurogiri’s ever present dark mist.
He’d been quiet just a little too long. He had to get to his test. Regardless of what this guy said, there were likely some schools that didn’t outwardly ban the quirkless, though his options would be limited, and even then most of those schools would likely try to find any reason to reject him.
Izuku would just have to ace this stupid placement test, and then any entrance exam he was allowed to sit for. He’d worked with worse odds before.
“As a matter of fact I have.” He lied through his teeth. “I am taking the right test.”
The man gave him an incredulous look and shrugged. “Well, power to you kid. You’re in room 119, down the hall on the left.” He passed Izuku a sticker with his information–probably to put on his test packet.
“Thank you.” He said curtly, walking away with clenched fists.
“Good luck kid.” The man’s eyes followed him, and Izuku heard his last mutter: “You’re gonna fucking need it.”
Izuku clenched his teeth, anger shooting up his jaw along with the pain. Bullshit. This was fucking bullshit. He’d been almost excited about all this nonsense, but this stupid bit of reality came back to crush down that little spark of hope he’d created for his future.
He found the room and an empty desk and sat down with a thump loud enough to draw the attention of the handful of other kids in the room. Izuku couldn’t even look at them. He couldn’t pass the time by guessing at their quirks and analyzing any visual ones, not without getting even more pissed.
It took way too much effort to continue breathing normally, as the anger faded to resignation. Only a few short months ago he was able to brush off casual discrimination without a thought. He was worthless, less than human in all aspects of his life, so little things like this… they meant nothing. But Yamada and Aizawa treated him like a person and didn’t give a rat's ass about his quirk (Aizawa’s words, not his).
Izuku watched the tests get passed around, understanding why he’d gotten so angry over this. Having anything good in his life forced him to recognize the bad, comparatively.
He was calm enough now to take the test, though frustration simmered underneath his skin the entire time. He passed through the packet once, twice, three times, four, before he was convinced of its perfection. Izuku was given another sticker by the proctor to seal his test and then told to fill out the little survey on the back before he left.
Izuku resisted a scoff as he read the questions, mostly mildly invasive things like his ethnicity, family income, parent’s education history, and a bunch of other nonsense. He either made up answers or checked the prefer not to say box when it was available.
It was the last question, and the single black line for the answer that gave him pause.
“Career Aspirations:” it read. The bold, blocky letters mocked him. He obviously had no idea. He glanced around the room, the rest of the kids still very much in the thick of their exams, some with worried, chewed lips, some who clearly gave zero shits about how they did. He doubted any of them really knew either. They were fifteen years old.
But Izuku guessed there must be some people who just knew, intrinsically, somewhere in the vicinity of their soul, what they were destined to do with their lives, from their first childhood dreams.
A memory came to Izuku, unbidden, as he stared blankly ahead. A memory of a childhood friendship ended with a shove and a shout of “Useless, worthless, Deku!” and of the only dream he’d ever truly had, dying along with it.
He wrote his answer impulsively, handing his test in and exiting the school as quickly as he could.
Aizawa was thankfully back already, knowing Izuku would finish early. That, or he’d never left, which might be the more likely option considering he was dozing in the driver’s seat.
Izuku knocked on the window and Aizawa unlocked the door, watching as Izuku plopped into his seat, with a deep sigh.
“Everything okay?”
“Test went fine.”
“Something else didn’t?”
“Talk about it later.”
Aizawa accepted this and pulled out of the parking lot. He watched Izuku from the corner of his eyes, nearly more than he was watching the road.
“Hizashi mentioned going out for dinner to celebrate, want to rain check that?”
Izuku nodded once. “Please.”
When they got back to the apartment, Izuku made a beeline to his room, grateful that Aizawa stopped Yamada from asking questions the moment they stepped through the door.
“We’re here when you want to talk.” Aizawa called after him.
Izuku waved a hand in acknowledgment but really couldn’t right now. He shut his door and locked it, chucking his pencils across the room and slumping to the floor. He wrapped his arms around his knees and tucked his chin to his chest, the darkness and the pressure bringing him just a bit of comfort.
Why had he written that down? And why did he feel so weird about it? The stupid little survey didn’t mean crap, he could have written garbage man and it would have carried the same weight. He was almost more frustrated with this than the realization that quirklessnes and a good education don’t exactly go hand in hand.
The darkness brought him back to the memory. He was five years old, freshly diagnosed quirkless. He was on the playground with Kacchan, on the tallest tower. It was their special spot, and they called it their hero agency, it was always their home base when they played heroes and villains with the other kids.
But they weren’t playing just yet. Izuku, sad but determined, pulled Kacchan down to the playground’s patterned floor to tell him the news.
“I don’t have a quirk. The doctor says I won’t get one. But don’t worry Kacchan! I’m gonna work super duper hard! Harder than All Might so I can still be a hero with you!”
Kacchan stood up and took a step back. “You can’t be a hero without a quirk. You’d be useless. You’d just get people hurt.”
“No way! I’m gonna train really hard and–”
“You’ll never be able to do anything right! You can’t even be a villain without a quirk!”
Izuku protested. “I’d never be a villain!”
“Shut up! Stupid, worthless, Deku!” Kacchan pushed him off the side of the tower with the ladder leading up. Izuku knew now that it probably wasn’t that tall. Maybe five or six feet at most. But in the memory it was endless, and when he hit the ground he couldn’t breath, he couldn’t think, all he could see was Kacchan looking down at him. The pain in his chest wasn’t from the fall, it was from his heart shattering into pieces.
Five days later his mom died and his father kidnapped him, and the universe confirmed what Kacchan said. That Midoriya Izuku could never be a hero.
So why had he written that down? It was impossible, even a five year old knew it. A quirkless person could never become a hero.
And yet… he had become a villain. Not technically speaking since the formal definition of a villain required quirk usage, but he was as much a member of the League of Villains as any other, against his will or not.
He could hold his own sparring against Tomura. He knew how to use more than a few weapons. His analysis was good enough for his father to hone it for use which, thinking about it, was how he learned to take on Tomura in the first place.
He was going to have to face his father again at some point. And they would be enemies, regardless of what Izuku did from here on out. Maybe… if he was strong enough to be a hero, he would have half a chance of surviving his father.
It was an odd thought, fighting his father, especially when he kept his lips sealed so others wouldn’t try to go up against him. Was it narcissistic to think he would stand any more of a chance? Probably. But if that encounter was inevitable it would be good to be prepared.
Still… heroics? Was he nuts? Heroes go through hell, put their lives on the line on a regular basis for the sake of others. He would be doing this just for himself.
But if he did somehow manage to defeat his father, that insane impossibility, he’d be saving others preemptively… that was something, right?
“Ugh.” He groaned into his knees, why had little Izuku wanted to be a hero in the first place?
It was because of All Might, wasn’t it? Because he’d seen All Might’s smile a million times in a thousand videos and felt seen and safe. Because he wanted to be that… because when his mom couldn’t stop crying over what Izuku now knew were bills, or her mean boss, or Izuku’s diagnosis, he would look up at her and smile, oh so wide, and bring her her favorite tea or a blanket or some chocolates and she would call him her hero.
And despite the mountain of fear the idea set on his shoulders… being a hero felt more right than anything else he’d considered in the last few weeks. Like it had stayed there, in the back of his chest through an entire decade of hurt, and actions to the contrary. It wasn’t something he liked, it was something he wanted .
Izuku did a quick search on his phone, scrolling through a webpage while he changed into more comfortable clothes. He went through his notebooks, thinking about training regimens and support gear and determination locked him firmly on the track.
But he couldn’t do any of this without support. Which meant, he had to ask a question that he’d never voiced to anyone after Kacchan for fear of the answer.
Still holding one of his notebooks, Izuku walked out into the living room where Yamada sat on the couch, watching the news, Aizawa just walking back in from the kitchen with coffee in hand.
“Hey kiddo!” Yamada turned in his seat to face him. “You hungry? We knocked but you didn’t answer.”
Izuku blinked, had it been that long? He must have really zoned out.
“Sorry about that. I was preoccupied. I’ll get some in a minute.”
“Did you want to talk about earlier?” Aizawa took a sip from his mug.
“Yes.” Izuku nodded. “Nothing bad happened, I was just reminded of what the world’s like for a person like me.”
Aizawa raised an eyebrow. “Want to elaborate on that?”
“Most high schools don’t accept quirkless students.”
Yamada let out an indignant squawk, but Izuku continued.
“No matter what I choose to do, no matter who I choose to be, I’m going to have to work ten times as hard as everyone around me to even be considered, and ten times that to be acknowledged in any capacity.” Izuku took a shaky breath. “So I figure, why not take the hard path? Why not go for something so absolutely outlandish a five year old knew to give up on it? Since I don’t have a realistic or reasonable option to begin with.”
“I’m going to have to face my father eventually, I want to give myself a fighting chance, I want to have a chance–” Izuku’s voice cracked and he coughed. “To save myself. So I have to ask.” He looked between Yamada and Aizawa, eyes settling on the latter.
“Do you think someone without a quirk can be a hero?”
Aizawa sat silent for a minute, looking thoughtful. “You’d have to work your ass off.”
“That’s a given.” Izuku interjected.
“But I don’t see why not.” Aizawa finished, eyes flashing red as he slipped into a terrifying smile.
Izuku glanced at Yamada, who was beaming. “I think you’d make a wonderful hero, Izuku. But I also want you to know, you don’t have to face your father. You don’t have to even see him ever again. There are people who can, and will do that for you, do you understand?”
Izuku understood what he meant. He knew, at least, that the two heroes in front of him would fight All for One for him in a heartbeat, and they’d likely die from it. Hell, All Might almost died five years ago. So many people had tried and failed to take down his father, but All for One rarely had proper turncoats. And he’d never had a son. It wasn’t much to go on, but it made Izuku different from Father’s long line of opposition, and maybe that would mean something in the end.
“I know.” He said.
Yamada’s smile dipped slightly, but he accepted that, and dragged Izuku into the kitchen to get something to eat. They had a lot more to discuss, but plans are best made on full stomachs.