Work Text:
The Midoriya tradition went back to before anyone could remember.
Growing up, Izuku’s mom would tell him family stories and secrets, back to before the age of quirks, before space travel, before any kind of computer ever existed, and he would listen with wonder and fascination, asking endless questions and pressing her on the details and pestering her about when he could start to learn.
She said he would have to wait until he got his quirk, and then had it under control.
Then he didn’t get one, and while he was devastated, he still looked forward to learning his family’s secrets.
At age five, the lessons began.
—
They started small.
There was an old incense burner that lived on a sideboard in the sitting room, carved with depictions of trees and birds and even a tiny bunny in a midnight forest, a full moon at the top of the sky.
It was made of bronze, and even when the incense wasn’t lit, it didn’t have the cool, empty feeling that metal usually had. Instead it was slightly warm, comforting, and it tingled with an energy that Izuku only ever associated with living things, the buzzing of life that he could sense from everyone, something that was unique to each person, and yet still marked them as living (Izuku did not yet know that not very many people could feel that at all, that his family line had had the gift for centuries, only that it was just a part of what made people themselves).
One hot and humid afternoon, his mom had brought it down from where it usually sat, just a bit too high for him to reach, and to the coffee table, and told him that when they lit the incense and said the magic words, it would bring the cool of night to wherever it was, and give them the protection of the moon.
She had taken him through the words, some very old form of Japanese that was only found in ancient monuments and poems, and while it had taken most of the afternoon, Izuku ended the day in a cool, breezy room with a silvery tinge of light, and he was so exhausted that he fell right to sleep.
In his dreams, the cool night air of ancient forests filled his minds, and bunnies leapt across the skies.
—
He stuck with the incense for a while, learning to control how much he influenced it, and in what ways, and while he started off tiring quickly, his endurance quickly grew, but eventually, Mom moved on to other things.
There was and old clay teapot, a set of carved chopsticks, and a small jade pendant, and all of them had a life of their own, offered help or gists or joys that his mom taught him to tap into, to coax into the worlds and harness to make the world just a little more comfortable, a little bit more like home.
They were the easiest things to use, imbued with generations of wishes and requests, and were the easiest to use, but his mom also taught him how to gain gifts from everyday things; from toys and flowers and bowls of rice, and to make them more vibrant, more lively, more satisfying.
They were subtle gifts, the kinds of things many would scoff at, that some would call placebo or wishful thinking, but Izuku had tested them, found these things really did happen. Why wouldn’t he believe it? The world was full of energy, and that was something you could measure and feel and know.
She taught him how to treat his belongings so they would treat him well in return, so they would be just a little softer, last just a little longer, so they would always find their way back to him, even if he lost them, or they were taken from him.
If he was kind to the world, the world would be kind to him. It was a system of reciprocity.
But it worked both ways.
If the world tipped the balance in his way, he would have to pay it back.
So when the world threw him into the path of All Might, and then a quirk all his own, he knew he would have to pay it back in a much bigger way than he had ever had before.
—
Earning One For All was a different kind of work to earning his gifts.
It was not about gentle coaxing or soft offers, it often felt more like demanding his body do what he told it, even when it didn’t want to, and crashing past every barrier he found, rather than simply nudging them out of the way.
It took some getting used to, and he knew that this was different to his family’s gifts, that it didn’t run on the same principles, but that didn't mean it wasn’t rubbing him the wrong way.
He had spent so much time working with the world, with the things it could offer, that pushing past that didn’t come naturally, though he thought he was getting there.
He wasn’t completely breaking his body, and when he muttered to the water and the tiles, they felt just a little kinder, so he thought that maybe the world was still happy to help, and that not everything worked exactly the same.
It was tough, and a few times the thought of quitting even crossed his mind. Deciding to decline One For All, and trying to make it as a hero with only his wits and the good will of his surroundings. But then he began to see that his effort, his blood and sweat and tears, those were like the exchanges he usually made, only others could do them too.
He would earn this power just like he had earned the last ones, but instead of doing it with studying and negotiation, this time he would do it with exercise and an excessive amount of muscle pain.
—
The Midoriya tradition went back to before anyone could remember, and Izuku was close to mastering it.
What was different this time, and even compared to those with quirks and powers all their own before him, was that Izuku was earning more than one thing, and that, in some ways, maybe it contradicted what he already knew.
He had a lot to learn about how the two interacted, and was interested to see where his life took him. Mixing his family’s gifts with All Might’s was something he was excited to test.
Magic was a fickle thing, but Midoriya Izuku was used to being dealt shit hands.
He would manage.