Chapter Text
Izuku touches his face.
He thumbs the lines raking his cheeks and nose. The tattoos are fairly dark, almost black. They disappear under his chin, reappearing around his neck and collar. They are shaded a deep purple sort of color, otherwise appearing almost black.
He does not lift the plain T-Shirt to spy the rest of the marks.
His fingernail tugs down a lower eyelid. His sclera is white, his iris a familiar shade of acidic yellow. He has plain pupils, letters of the Upper Kizuki hidden from view. His pupils’ are rather small but only due to the bathroom light hanging overhead. He blinks, withdrawing his fingers. He has a head of green hair and eyelashes, and he observes the said colors in dismay. He is young, baby fat still clinging to his cheeks. He has wide, wide eyes.
Two polite knocks sound from the door.
He retreats, stepping away from the sink counter.
“Yes?”
A feminine voice from the other side sounds, “Honey you’ll be late for school at this point. Are you ready? Katsuki-kun is here.”
Curious, Akaza opens the door.
The woman is similarly colored and he accurately assumes she is of biological relation to him.
Her hands fly to her mouth. “Oh my-! ‘Zuku, sweetie, what happened?!”
Akaza studies her.
“Are you my mother?”
“Oh God-!” The woman collapses to her knees. “Is this your quirk? ‘Zuku, honey, do you not remember me?”
Akaza dips his head in thought, observing her. He can smell the human in her; the flesh and blood and her heart, something that beat rhythmically within her concaved chest. Her throat heaves, her forehead beading with sweat. Already, her eyes are wet, tearing up with something weighty.
“So you’re my mother,” he eyes her dubiously. “Do you have a script of todays news? Or yesterdays?”
The woman pushes to her feet, lips pursing. She retreates, returning with a silver rectangle. “Here. Do you have any memories?”
Akaza does not answer her.
She opens it for him, and he frowns at the numerous buttons. She sees his look and presses a certain button. There is a flicker of light and one part of the unfolding box lights up. He observes the curious machine closely. Eventually it shows familiar text and he reads the kanji.
Powering on…
Akaza tilts his head, bemused.
“What is this?”
With watery eyes, the woman softly says, “Your laptop.”
She disappears, shuffling from the bathroom and hall.
A door opens and shuts and he listens to his rambling mother as she talks to someone yet to be identified. He messes around with the thing, trying to figure out how to use it. It is difficult, yes, but eventually he found the internet and it could answer his every question.
It is a lot more useful than the flailing woman.
“I—I called the school. Dr. Garaki will—I set an appointment with him. I said it’s—it’s an emergency.”
Akaza focuses on the machine, absently taking in her fumbling words. Each character is a button and he hesitantly presses each one to create a grammatically correct question. Once accomplished, he skims the history and local, present news. He hums under his breath as he takes in the little information he can. He will have to revisit these rabbit holes.
His mother eventually drags him to this strange looking box. His mother climbs inside and forces him to do the same. He could resist, possibly devour her in the process but he withholds the act. So far the sun has yet to hit him and he is unwilling to test out that specific weakness.
He mimes her, reaching over his shoulder to pull something leather-like across his chest, buckling the strange contraption with a jaunty click.
“We’re gonna see Dr. Garaki soon, okay honey?”
He withholds a sneer and smiles politely at the green-haired woman.
She wraps an arm around another seat, looking past him.
He stiffens as the box moved.
He grips the leather-like strap tightly, looking about the contraption. He looks outside the windows, carefully withholding a frown. Nevertheless his brows do furrow and his eyes do squint. The grass is moving, as are the trees and various bushes. He watches, inwardly gawking. Yes, he is familiar with this type of transport, but it feels as if nothing were pushing him along, like horses, paddles, water, or wings.
Eventually they seem to reach the correct location, pulling up to a broad if stout building. His mother shifts the gears of the box, pulling something out of the space beside the wheel. Her door closes with a loud bang and she circles the thing, collecting him from the back. She then shuts his own door. He does not wince at the noise, though it is a near thing.
There is young woman standing beside a white office desk.
“The Midoriyas?”
His mother nods.
Akaza, trapped in her quaking arms, examines the dull lobby. There is only one other soon-to-be patient present. He watches the old man who seems to be filling out some kind of paperwork.
“Great! Follow me.”
“Alright.”
Eventually they are sat in front of a heavyset man. His fingers are braided, resting in his lap. He is leaning on one arm of a desk chair, seemingly at ease. He cranes his head, as if in concentration.
“A quirk, then?”
His mother nods quickly. “He was in the bathroom when I, um, found him. He doesn’t – or, well – he doesn’t seem to remember me. I think.”
At the shaking words, Akaza examines the man in front of him. Something clings to him, slick-like. It is dark and cloying, desperate and terribly mean.
He reminds Akaza of the human’s that took pleasure in stealing from the poor and those who participated in illegal orgies or murder. Inwardly, a grin splits his face, as he further studies the lying doctor. He seems lackadaisical at the time, but there is some anger in him, festering and frothing. He hides a pleased smirk.
“Izuku,” the man kneels before him, a tone not unlike that of a grandfather or sibling coloring his words. “”Do you know this woman? Do you know my name?”
Akaza shakes his head.
“What do you remember then?”
Akaza debates whether or not he should confess to the man and his ensuing mother.
“It was 1915. December 20th.”
The man itches at his chin, murmuring under his breath. His mother has a similar reaction, eyeing him strangely. Her fingers tighten on his palms nonetheless, smiling in a manner that is both encouraging and shaky. There is a fair dusting of freckles that draws his focus and he knows without proof that his cheeks and nose mirror hers.
“So you are from the Taishō period?”
Akaza nods, allowing them to draw their own conclusions.
“How curious,” the doctor says.
“Is there any chance he’ll recover his memories?”
“I doubt so if he hasn’t already. Remember this could possibly be his quirk. It’s utterly new territory. Boy, do you remember anything else?”
Akaza, having never been a particularly good liar, shakes his head in answer.
The man eyes him suspiciously but otherwise takes the answer as affirmation to some thought. Eventually the man climbs to his feet, sitting in his chair. Pushing his glasses to his temples, Akaza watches the human pinch the bridge of his nose and rub his eyes. There is something tired there, something porcelain-akin. “Do you even know your own name, boy?”
“Akaza.”
“So you do remember something.”
“My name is Akaza.”
His mother sniffles. He ignores her.
“Is that all you know? Do you remember a surname? Any relatives?”
He maintains his silence. The doctor eventually sighs.
The man turns in his chair a few degrees, addressing his mother. “It seems like some form of reincarnation quirk or amnesia.” His hands unfold, as if to surrender something of value. “Personally I would get him checked at some clinic. If he’s alright, then I would argue some sort of quirk. I am sorry, Miss Midoriya that I cannot help you further.”
“Would you prefer being called Akaza over Izuku?” his mother asks on their way out.
The parking garage is shaded, thankfully.
“Yes.”
“Alright, sweetie,” his mother demurs quietly. “Are you hungry?”
He nods into the meat connecting her neck and shoulder.
“What do you want baby?”
He shrugs.
She laughs breathily, arms wrapping him tighter. She has him hugged to her breasts, his nose buried into the soft of her throat. She hums at him as they approach the strange box. It beeps and she opens a rear door, gently plopping him inside and buckling him in. She scoots in to her own side after closing it. She wraps an arm around the wheel, touches a stick at its center and the pulls out of the shade.
He marvels at his skin. The sun is hitting him, wrapping his wrists and knees. He watches in surprise as the tissue turns red, yes, but otherwise remains whole. He examines the blisters closely. His skin is sensitive but he remains alive. He rotates his wrist, peering closely at the tissue.
”Is something the matter, honey?”
“No.”
His mother sighs. “Alright, good. Let’s – let’s just go home.”
Akaza watches the world as they speed past stores, people, and greenery.
He runs his tongue over his teeth, prodding the sharp canines. His train of thought is abstract and he notes, calmly, that his skin is reddening with the prolonged contact with the sun. He touches his skin, mind elsewhere, rubbing the delicate tissue. With a stray thought, he speaks.
“The sun is harmful, now.”
His mother chances a quick glance back, lips pulling down in a frown.
“Due to your quirk?”
“Yes.”
“Alright sweetie. We’re—we’re almost home, and then we can figure some stuff out.”
Akaza draws his eyes from his mother’s whitening knuckles, again withdrawing to the windows. He doesn’t shy away from the sun but he does withdraw his skin from where the columns of daylight penetrate the glass. The burns heal relatively quickly, the skin bubbling in regeneration.
His mother is careful to navigate their way home. She weaves between other similar box-akin contraptions, trying to drive beneath the rare patches of shade. He watches the windows and inwardly appreciates the woman’s thoughtfullness.
Soon enough they arrive at an apartment complex, his mother pulling into a relatively shaded lot. The box halts and is turned off by his mother. She sighs, before opening her door and climbing out. She circles the box before opening his door to collect him. Her hands are warm and they remind him of his father. He remembers sickness, thievery, and restless nights. He remembers his fiancée and teacher. He remembers how unfair it all is—had been.
But.
The weak die and those who survive must remain strong.
He simply hadn’t been strong enough.
She carries him out, setting him on his feet. She looks at his burns closely before breathing heavily through her nostrils. The skin is only vaguely red now, having healed remarkably fast in his time within the contraption. He allows her inspection as she grasps his wrists and turns them this way and that. It is several seconds before her curiosity is sated.
They enter the apartment together, hands clasped. His mother shuts the door behind her, locking it with a soft click. She releases his hand, toeing off her flats in the entry hall. She watches as he copies her and then she smiles, a hesitant thing, and retreats to the kitchen.
Akaza pads to the laptop still remaining abandoned in the hall. He bends at the waist to sweep the thing up from the floor. His muscles protest and he frowns in the privacy of his own mind. He cocks his head as he runs a diagnostic eye over his body.
He is stiff. Inflexible.
Under the t-shirt, he touches his stomach. Yes, it is flat but rather undefined. He knows, as a child, that his musculature could not to be too sculpted but the stiffness could easily be trained out of him.
His mother putters around in the kitchen and calles him to her.
“My name is Akaza.”
“R—Right.”
He circles the middle table, trailing a hand over the embossed surface.
“So, are—do you have any other—any other issues?”
“No.”
“Okay…”
“I am only sensitive to sunlight. My nails are sharp and so are my teeth.”
“…Like a vampire?”
His brow furrows and for the first time, he outwardly frowns. “A what?”
“A vampire?” She repeats. “They have fangs and hurt if they’re exposed to sunlight.”
Akaza, baffled, shakes his head. “I am only sensitive to the sun, I remain alive. I do not have fangs.”
“And your eyes.”
“Were they a different color before?”
“…Yes. Green.”
He clicks his tongue, nodding. He sets the laptop on the kitchen table and climbs onto a chair. He swings his legs as he opens the machine, having memorized how to turn it on.
His fingers, unused to the location of those kanji, dance awkwardly over the board. He researches the most glaring of his lack in knowledge. He has yet to learn everything but he begins with the most obvious, that being the appliances in the ‘kitchen’ and the ‘car’, learning of its name and abilities and how they function. He muses over the surplus of information, lips pushing in thought as he examines the scripted details and mechanics of the machine.
“Where is my father?”
His mother’s spine stiffened.
“He… he left.”
“Why?”
“I’ll cook up some eggs and rice.”
At the poor deflection, his frown deepens. As he peruses the internet, he eyes his mother’s hitched shoulders speculatively. She remaines otherwise silent on the matter and he accepts the quiet, mildly irritated but oddly at peace.
“It is 2043?” he chokes.
“Yes. It must be shocking after previously being in a time so… long ago.”
Akaza is neither insulted nor too surprised. Of course the year is aweing, but not to a degree that is panic inducing. He studies the screen and resulting number, idly drumming his fingers over the wooden table placed at the center of the kitchen his mother whirled through.
Around one hundred thirty years.
He hums noncommittedly. He has quite the task of informing himself of this new history. Any knowledge of this time will be detrimental to his moving, and he scrolls idly through the Wikipedia pages, propping his chin on a fist.
He would have to familiarize himself with the varying languages. Some of the katakana are unfamiliar to him. The kanji is further advanced than it had been in his time so he will have to refamiliarize himself with that part of the alphabet. The only one remaining would be the hiragana, and he is knowledgeable over the words, them having not changed much over the ensuing centuries.
Akaza looks through the appliances of the hovel, spying the knives and the steel box tucked beside the counters.
His fingers dance over the keyboard as he researches.
“I could um—answer any questions you have?”
Akaza stares at her.
The woman shifts nervously.
“That will be unnecessary.” He moves the laptop a quarter of an inch to the side. “However, could you tell me about Izuku.”
The woman’s eyes turn glassy and her lip trembles.
“He. He was a good boy. A good son…”
Akaza studies the woman.
“I’ll always love you. Izuku—Akaza… it doesn’t matter. I love you both.”
Akaza’s lips pushes as his head dips in thought. “What about him though?”
“He wants… wanted to be a hero. He wanted to make people smile, to save them…”
Akaza hums. “He sounds like he had rather lofty goals.”
He thinks over the high morale the boy seemed to keep and in the privacy of his own mind, he once again frowns. The woman shuffling under his eyes is weak, both physically and mentally. He regards her with a small dollop of spite. She is thin, muscular system stout and reedy. Her nerves bit at her spine and her bones, muscle tissue, and sinew are nothing of importance.
She reminds him of Koyuki.
Breathing deeply, Akaza clicks his nails over the grain of the wood.
Slowly, a smile lifts his lips, mind settling.
Eventually his attendance is reversed and he has to head off to schooling.
His mother had burst out at him, a single black umbrella cradled in her hands. She had been biting her lips, teething over the bottom one with something approaching anxiety. She handed off the piece of hardware, a curious lilt to her chin.
Akaza walks out of the apartment, opening the object as instructed. It is similar to a fan and he examines the color and its effect on him as he crosses the sun caked sidewalk leading directly to his school.
His mother is behind him, holding the rear. Her gentle whistling is more soothing than irritating.
He has supposedly acquired his ‘quirk’ late. He looks over his arms, looking over the lack of definition. As stated previously, he is still too young in this body for him to develop a healthy weight and structure. But, again, he could work on his flexibility and retrain some muscle memory into that of what is available.
He adjusted the curved handle, rolling it between his palms.
His mother is saying something and Akaza pays her no mind, knowing her speech to be some listless squabble and nothing of importance. The handle is plastic with a long shaft branching into a large pool of shade.
They approach the school as he finishes examining the umbrella, as his mother had called it. She touches his shoulder briefly, smiling shakily.
“Have a good day, Iz—Akaza. I love you!”
He waves her off, following several other students to two large entry doors, their handles hefty but light. A small pack of students drifts into the building and Akaza silently joins them. Once inside, he closes the umbrella, approaching an official looking office. His mother had told him to do so, and he watches the human’s curious mutation-clad shoulders hitch in surprise at his sudden appearance.
He has rid himself of any intent and his compass makes it so it is laughably easy to sneak up on people. Not to mention he is ‘newly’ tattooed. The woman looks up from her paperwork, obviously on edge, and smiles blandly.
“What can I do for you?”
“My mother said to give you this,” he says, handing over the attendance excuse. She peruses it, lips miming some of the text. He is careful not to touch her in the process.
“Alright, you’re good to go!”
He nods and turns on his heel.
The halls are relatively empty and he slides open the shoji doors, expression bored. His lips turn down at the bewildered silence his arrival invokes. He frowns at the bizarre faces of his ‘peers’, eyeing their fists, pens and pencils clenched just so. Their lips are frozen in conversation, obviously pausing from some discussion.
Inwardly, he resists the urge to bare his teeth.
He approaches the only vacant desk, fluidly avoiding any attempt at tripping him up. He listens, in a small smolder, as his ‘peers’ whispered loudly as he passed, spouting mean words and accusatory statements that are stripped of any intent at subterfuge. They are sharp and needle thin, but they are indeed childish so they matter not.
He eyes the varying graffiti staining his desk as he slings a bag onto the back of a wooden seat. Some are rather inventive and he allowes something akin to amusement curl his lips. He rubbs the pad of one thumb over several of the curses and names. His umbrella is leant against his desk. The previous silence is broken by the teacher and his clearing of his throat and the wrinkling of paper.
“Onto page thirty-two.”