Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Quirkless...?" His mother echoes, horror donning on her face. "No, no, no, no! You don't understand, he cant be Quirkless!" 

Izuku sits silently, barely blinking as he observes his mother's despair over his lack of a quirk. He doesn't quite comprehend it, something ringing as inherently false about the statement but he's too young, too inexperienced, to put his finger on it. 

A feeling buzzes under his skin but he snuffs it out. 

"I'm sorry but its the truth. The doctor sighs, running a hand through his hair. He wishes that he could give them any news but this news. This kid was going to have a rough life ahead of him, the Quirkless were never treated kindly by society. "He has all the precursor symptoms for the Quirkless, a double toe joint, an appendex, and all the scans we did came up negative. He doesn't have a single quirked joint in his body. I don't know what else to tell you."

"Well test him again." Inko hisses, grip tightening around Izuku's arm. The brusing pressure makes him let out a low whine. 

Inko releases him with a coo.

"I'm sorry baby, I didn't mean to hurt you. Mommy's just worried for your future is all." 

Izuku doesn't understand. He's come to terms with the fact that he's quirkless five months ago but Izuku stays silent. He's been taught better than to talk at these appointments by now. Back talking against his mother will just send her further into her hysterics. 

"It would be a waste of time to test him again. This is the fourth time we've retested him for a quirk this month- I think you just need to come to terms with this being your new reality Mrs. Midoriya. It only hurts your son to deny that he is, in fact, Quirkless."

"No." Inko hisses, tears in her eyes. "Come on Izuku, we're going to get another opinion from a more qualified quirk specialist." 

Izuku lets himself be led along. That was too bad, he liked this one. He hadn't been mean about the diagnosis like many of the others had. He gives a small wave to the man as he disappears from Izuku's sight. 

Izuku still didn't understand why she was so upset that he lacked something. (Was it his fault...? For being born this way...?) 

He didn't want to go to a new doctor. Not when they already knew what was wrong with him. 

- - - - - 

"Mommy?" Izuku questions as his mother helps him step onto the stool to wash his hands. Seven months since his first official quirk diagnosis and his mother has taken him to several more doctors since the nice one. Izuku wishes he could remember his name. 

"Yes baby?" 

Izuku hesitates before his childish curiosities take a hold of him. "Is Daddy mad that I don't have a quirk?" 

He isn't stupid, he hears their fighting in the living room, in the halls, in their bedroom, it's everywhere really. Their house is pockmarked with proof of their disputes. Izuku prefers to just stay in his room when this happens. 

Just because he's young doesn't mean that he never takes notice of it. 

"Oh baby." Inko murmurs, cupping her son's face. "Daddy is very important to some very important people and is relying on your quirk to support him." 

"Oh." Is all Izuku can manage. He still doesn't understand it but he can tell it's important. 

It still doesn't change the fact that he's been officially diagnosed as Quirkless dozens of times over. 

"Yes." Inko plasters a smile on her face. There's an odd uptick to it that has Izuku wondering if his mother was ill. She didn't seem to be sick though so he brushes off the feeling. "Today we're going to see your Daddy's personal doctor. You remember Mr. Tsubasa right? His grandson has the wings quirk." 

Izuku does remember. He remembers the man's predatory grin and the chills that wash over his spine in the Doctors presence, as if he is nothing but a bug under the Doctor's microscope.

Izuku hates feeling like a bug. 

But he doesn't really have a choice as his mother straps him into the backseat of the car, fastening his car seat tightly. 

Izuku rests his head on the window and hopes that this appointment will be over quick.

- - - - - 

The fighting gets worse after that. Izuku has to cover his ears to escape it all. 

"Useless!" A vase smashes on the ground. Izuku flinches and digs himself deeper into the couch behind him. "He should have gotten a combination of our quirks." His father growls in his anger, fire steaming from his mouth like a frothing dragon. 

"I- I don't know where we went wrong-" His mother pleads. 

"I do." His father's voice is stone cold, fire turning to ice in his mouth. "My first mistake was thinking that you could give me a heir." 

"Please-" Inko cries as Hizashi hauls her up by her hair, makeup smudged down her face from tears. 

"Do us both a favor, get rid of him." 

Hisashi drops Inko and storms out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him. 

His father never comes home to them again. 

His mother drinks that night. It's not an unusual occurrence for her and Izuku finds himself embraced in her hold as she vows to make everything better in crazed whispers. 

Then, cradling Izuku's small form in her lap she brings a gun up to her head and pulls the trigger with a resounding crack. 

Izuku sobs at the noise as his mother's grip slackens around him before falling away entirely. Blood flecks mar his face and Izuku can only stare at the gun in his mother's hands, the gunpowder slowly falling out of the weapon like ash. 

Oddly, its the most at peace that he's ever seen her. Even with her face battered and bruised and her head blown out onto their kitchen floor. 

Izuku knows she's gone by the morning and cries. For all its worth, he sobs for the mother he lost, for the father that destroyed his mother.

A new quirk settles under his skin, nestling it's way into his small body. 

At five years old, Izuku feels like he's drowning. 

Chapter Text

Four days. 

Izuku is by himself in the apartment for four days before a concerned neighbor calls the police about the disturbance. No one in their neighborhood had thought anything of the gunshot, it wasn't uncommon to hear noises like that on this side of Musutafu. Despite being so close to UA the outer districts of the city were ridden with crime. 

As always, there seemed to be a lack of heroes in this side of town. 

Izuku knows so because his Mommy told him! She said not to go out at night and that it was very important for Izuku to not answer the door for anyone. She even installed some of those child locks so that his tiny toddler hands couldn't open the door. 

We'll, they don't work so much anymore but the thought was still there. 

In the end, their neighbor, Mrs. Norashiko only called the police because of the lack of movement from their apartment. Their neighbor had become accustomed to their weekly ritual of seeking out quirk doctors and it was suspicious when no one had left the apartment in days. 

It had become an unusual sight to not see the mother son pair go to their appointments. 

And so, when the police knock on his door, Izuku hesitates to open it. 

His mother had said to not open the door for anyone, no matter how friendly they seemed. But she had also said she was going to fix things before killing herself. 

Izuku isn't sure how much he trusts his mother's judgement anyways.  

He pulls himself onto his feet, away from his mother's body for the first time in four days and answers the door. At first he struggles to undo the child lock because of how high the door knob was but eventually he gets it unlocked after standing on his tiptoes for a minute. 

"Are you Izuku?" A kind looking officer says. "We're from the Musutafu police department. We're checking out a disturbance call, do you mind if we come in?" 

He blinks, staring up at the pair of tall men before promptly shutting the door in their faces. He's fighting an internal war with himself as he unlocks the rest of the padlocks and swings the door open again. 

Ah to hell with it, stranger danger is for someone who cares. 

The officers slowly step in, maneuvering around broken shards of ceramic littering the floor. Izuku unceremoniously points further into the room and the officers cautiously take in the rank smell of death and decay. 

"We have a code-187." The nice officer calls into his walkie as his partner gags at the stench. 

Izuku can barely smell it anymore, to him the apartment might as well smell like his mother's favorite perfume. 

"Have you been with her the whole time kid?" The nice officer crouches before him as the other officer examines his mother's dead body. 

Izuku nods and the officer shifts to block the child's vision of the suicide. It's too late though, Izuku will have this event permanently engraved in his brain for the rest of his life. 

Suddenly, Izuku is hit with a wave of relief that someone other than the corpse of his dead mother is there, and cries. 

"Shh, shhh. It's alright. You're doing great kid." The officer comforts, watching out of the corner of his eyes as his partner pulls on a pair of latex gloves. "I'm sure that was very scary. Can you tell me where your Dad is?" 

"Gone." Izuku hiccups, his first words in weeks spilling out from his lips. "He left and Mommy got sad." 

"It's okay now sweetheart." The officer coaxes Izuku into his arms and Izuku clings to the man, his first human contact in days. "Why don't we go get you cleaned up and something to eat hm?" He's kind, Izuku thinks, to try and distract him from what he's already seen. 

Izuku nods tiredly. 

"How old are you?" The officer continues to make small talk as his partner photographs the crime scene. For someone so used to violence, Izuku thinks that this officer displays a lot of humanity. 

Izuku sluggishly holds up five fingers, hesitating before adding a sixth. Izuku is fairly certain that his birthday was the day before yesterday. His Mommy would always bake him a cake and sing to him on that day! So he always kept an eye on the calendar for when it came around with a gleeful anticipation. 

"Six." The officer murmurs. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth that a child this young bore witness to such a tragedy. 

"She's been dead for four days give or take." The other officer joins them, whispering to his partner as he strips his bloodied gloves from nimble hands. "Has he just been sitting here with her this whole time?" 

They exchange knowing glances and Izuku stares blankly up at them, tears rolling down his cheeks.  

"Come on kid." The nice officer offers his hand with a strained smile on his face. "Let's get you out of here." 

Izuku shakily takes the offered hand. 

(If only everyone was kind enough to shield kids from the horrors of the world.) 

- - - - - 

Foster care, Izuku slowly comes to learn, is it's own unique type of hell. As a quirkless six year old with no living relatives willing to take him in his prospects for adoption are abysmally low. 

Even the grouchy old social worker with old eyes told him so. 

She'd acted like he was a ticking time bomb by placing him in a group home instead of a foster family. Izuku thinks she even said something about him not having a place in this world. (Izuku secretly thinks that she was very rude.) 

At least the group home Izuku's been placed in seems friendly enough. They tolerate his quirklessness to a degree. 

But only barely. 

And by barely, Izuku means to say that when the adults weren't around, not at all. 

But it's okay! To Izuku this honestly isn't much different from living with his father. In fact, he would even say it's better. None of the kids here had a fire quirk to use on him. 

Even if they did try to beat him up on a near daily basis just for existing. 

Izuku eats his meals in silence, eyes darting between the other kids at the table. They eye him with a sneering distain that he is slowly becoming accustomed to. 

There are three of them in particular that enjoy ganging up on him after mealtime. Two older boys and a girl just a few years older than him. 

One of them possesses a simple augmentation quirk that allows him to absorb kinetic energy directed at him but not redirect it. Izuku personally thinks that his quirk is cool but then again, he thinks all quirks are cool. 

Even when they're being used to hurt him. 

The other boy with the weird eyes is insecure and feels the need to take it out on him for whatever reason. Izuku isn't quite sure what his quirk is yet but he's determined to find out. 

The girl on the other hand, possesses a powerful emitter type quirk that hurts anyone that touches her skin. Izuku's been on the receiving end of that quirk one too many times to be comfortable being in the same proximity as her. 

Izuku suppresses the familiar buzz under his skin when they come too close to him. 

He had cried a lot the first few times they cornered him after dinner and demanded he pay respect to their hierarchy. Despite this, he fights and looses horrifically every time. 

Eventually, Izuku stops crying and starts fighting back with a feral glint in his eyes. 

He doesn't start winning their little scraps (because lets be honest, that's what they were,) until he discovers the quirk that once belonged to his dead mother. 

It was purely an accident that he discovered his ability to use his mother's quirk, Pull. And even then, his ability to use it is meager in comparison to what his mother could do with it. 

Still, the first time Izuku manages to subtly implement it into their scraps and comes out with a few less bruises for it he considers that a win. And if he subtly uses Pull to deflect the oncoming blows the following night and the nights after, no one but him has to know. 

Even bruised and battered, Izuku can't help the wild grin at his discovery. 

- - - - - 

Izuku becomes well acquainted with subtle violence at the group home.

He still misses his mother sometimes, he misses her wild eyes and her frantic assurances that he had a quirk, despite what all the doctors said. 

Izuku supposes that in the end, she was right to say that he had a quirk. 

His fights with the three (who's names he came to learn later as Yutaka, Hanzou, and Yume.) turned into a source of comfort for Izuku, a familiarity within turbulence. 

His favorite part though, is using Pull to steal snacks off of the table when his caretakers aren't watching. 

Izuku has perfected the look of innocence when he blames the ones who ganged up on him for stealing the snacks. After all, how could little Izuku, quirkless and defenseless Izuku, steal snacks when he wasn't anywhere near the table? (His beatings are always worse after that but the win gives him a cruel satisfaction.) 

Despite the ire they gain from the matriarch, Izuku might even dare to say that he was having fun. 

They continue this song and dance for over a year. He gets even better at using Pull to subtly deflect their blows away from him. Izuku still makes sure to get hit but makes the blows off kilter enough that they won't cause him any lasting damage. 

Then their group of three becomes two when the boy with the weird eyes gets adopted. Their attacks on him lessen after that and Izuku almost finds that he considers them to be friends. 

But like all things for Izuku, nothing good can ever last. 

It happens on his seventh birthday, the emergence of his soulmarks. In all honesty, Izuku hadn't expected any to come in for him at all. His father hadn't ever displayed any and neither had his mother. In all reality the very existance of them had slipped his mind. 

Izuku doesn't think much of them but he is frightened what they might mean for those bound to him. 

He's so frightened at the possibilities that he doesn't even bother to count them after seeing the first one and desperately covering it with his shirt again. 

He'll look at them later, after breakfast. 

As Izuku goes to sit down in his spot a resounding shock rips through the building,

Izuku's world is yet again thrown off kilter as it explodes into ash and flame.