Chapter Text
When Izuku was a child, his father often took him to business meetings and let him wander around the building as he pleased. It was dangerous for a child, but Izuku didn’t know that, so he would wander through the corridors with white walls and floors and ceilings, and harsh fluorescent lighting. It always reminded him a bit of a hospital, with how cold and clean it was, but he didn’t mind.
It was on one of these trips that he met the cloud boy.
He couldn’t have been older than four, and he stumbled through an unlocked pair of double doors into a room with tons of humming machines and interesting tubes. Like the small child he was, he was curious, and was reaching for one of the glowing tubes when a pair of hands and a kind voice pulled him away.
“Hey, now,” said a voice from behind Izuku, making him startle. Two hands easily picked him up, moving him away. “Those are dangerous, I wouldn’t touch them, okay?”
When Izuku nodded he was set down, and he turned around, looking up at a boy with blue cloudy hair and a kind smile. “Okay,” he nodded, a little sad that he had almost done something bad.
The boy reached down to pat Izuku’s head. “It’s okay, you didn’t know,” he smiled, “What’re you doing here? You’re pretty young.”
Izuku shrugged a little. “I was wan- wa- wandering! Yeah!” He grinned, proud of himself for saying the word correctly.
The cloud boy nodded a bit, glancing behind him. “Here, come with me, you can stay here for a little so you don’t get lost.”
The cloud boy had taken him away to a small area with a bed and a chair, hidden behind a few sets of stacked boxes, and he’d set Izuku in the chair and asked him why he was there.
“My dada brought me!” little Izuku chirped happily, legs swinging back and forth, not reaching the ground. “He brings me a lot! Cause he works here!”
The loud boy nodded. “Your dada, huh?” he hummed.
They’d talked for a little while, mostly with the cloud boy listening to little Izuku ramble about anything and everything - quirks, his friends, his friends’ quirks, heroes, lots of things - until Izuku heard his dad calling for him. The cloud boy had ushered him to the door and pushed it open for him, letting Izuku slip into the hallways where he could rejoin his father, the cloud boy watching, unnoticed from behind the window of the door.
“There you are, Izuku!” Hisashi laughed, scooping his son into his arms. The cloud boy paled, recognizing just who the man was.
“Mhm!” little Izuku waved his hands in the air, giggling as his dad lifted him up.
“And what were you doing?” Hisashi asked with a smile.
“I made a friend!” Izuku grinned.
“Is that so?” Hisashi asked.
“Mhm! He’s tall and cloudy and he let me talk about heroes!”
Hisashi smiled and shifted Izuku in his arms, glancing back at the door to the lab. “Sounds like you had a lot of fun.”
Izuku nodded eagerly, turning in his dad’s arms to wave back at the doors his friend was through.
And then they had left, and that had been the first time Izuku met the cloud boy. The second time Izuku met the cloud boy, he was five, and he’d gone looking for him.
Little Izuku carefully pushed open one of the doors to the room his friend was in, looking around for him. There he was!
The cloud boy seemed startled by the sound of the door opening, but when he saw Izuku, he smiled. “You’re back!” he said, walking over to take Izuku’s hand and lead him back behind the boxes.
“Mhm!” Izuku nodded, “I wanted to see you again!”
The cloud boy paused for a second, before smiling down at him, a softer smile this time. “Thank you,” he said, and to Izuku it sounded like there weren’t many people who came to see him. He must be pretty lonely, Izuku thought.
He’d sat back in the comfy chair that was so big that his legs dangled down without reaching the floor and smiled up at the cloud boy. “What’s your name?” he asked.
The question seemed to catch the cloud boy of guard. He was silent for a moment before he answered. “... Call me Kumo.”
“Okay!” Izuku chirped, swaying in his eat with all the energy of a little kid. “I’m Izuku!”
“Well, hello then, Izuku,” Kumo smiled.
That had been the time that Izuku learned the cloud boy’s name, or at least one of them. He visited the cloud boy each time his dad took him with, happily calling for him as he entered the room with the dangerous machines. Sometimes, Kumo seemed to have forgotten who he was, but that was okay! Izuku would just tell him and make friends with him all over again! The room with the dangerous machines became one of his favorite places, even if he still didn’t know what any of them did (and Kumo told him he didn’t want to).
It was only a year or so later, though, that Izuku learned the room was called a lab, and that horrible things happened within.
When Izuku was six, or six and a half and knew he was quirkless, his dad brought him to the lab outside of a meeting. He’d told Izuku he was going to stay there for a while, and Izuku had happily stayed because his friend was here. But as the hours bled into each other and Izuku began to cry because he wanted to go home, Kumo worried more and more about what All For One’s plans for his son really were.
Those plans soon became clear when The Doctor entered late at night, wheeling a child-sized gurney. Kumo had been horrified, and it was the first time Izuku had seen him angry as he fought The Doctor, only to finally be subdued with a tranquilizer shot. The Doctor had hefted him up onto one of the machines as Izuku hid behind a stack of boxes, and his screaming was the worst thing Izuku had ever heard. Then The Doctor came for him.
Soon, Izuku had joined Kumo in hiding in the recesses of the lab, sleeping in the little beds hidden behind the boxes, and fearing the sound of the lab door opening. Kumo did his best to protectIzuku from everything, but with Izuku’s body able to handle more than even two quirks at once because he was quirkless, he was often the focus of Doctor Garaki’s twisted experiments. Throughout the years, Izuku gained quite a few scars, and was often left crying at night because he was in so much pain he couldn’t sleep.
Kumo did his best to teach Izuku what he could, and would soothe Izuku’s pain, but the best thing he did was give Izuku hope.
“Just you wait,” Kumo said, running a hair through Izuku’s hair, “you’re gonna get out of here. You’re gonna be safe, okay?”
Izuku shrugged and cuddled up against him.
“I know it seems bad right now, but you’ll be okay,” Kumo said soothingly, “Tell you what, if you get out of here… I have a friend named Shouta. Go to him, he’ll keep you safe.”
Izuku did eventually escape, finding his way back home through the dark and the light of morning, not knowing where to go. He’d ended up staying with Kacchan’s family for a little while before his mom took him back in once things settled, and one day, his memories of everything just… disappeared. It was like it had never happened, except for hazy dreams of a cloud boy, scars that covered his body, and flinches at the sound of double doors opening on tile.