Chapter Text
[The sludge villain]
It was— Violation was the first word that popped to mind, but that didn’t sound nearly strong enough for what it was.
Izuku was used to feeling helpless—he was Quirkless, it was a thing you just got used to.
Learned to get used to.
But this—
There was being helpless and then there was this.
x
[After Bakugou-Sludge, avoiding All Might]
Izuku didn’t even blame All Might, honestly. He really, really didn’t.
All Might was a hero. (He was Izuku’s hero. Even after—after everything, he was still Izuku’s hero.) And he’d thought he’d been doing what heroes did.
Saving Izuku’s life. As he’d just got done doing moments before.
And really, honestly , with the showing he’d given literally minutes previous, how could Izuku have dared expect any other answer. He’d shown himself quite thoroughly useless, there. How ridiculous he must have sounded. ‘Hey, All Might, I know I just got done almost suffocating right in front of you, but do you think it’s a good idea for me to go throwing myself into other even more dangerous situations?’
The arrogance he’d had in that moment.
(The arrogance he still had, now, trying in spite of everything. Because if there was something Izuku didn’t know how to do, it was give up.)
It was why he’d run away the second time. He really hadn’t wanted a second lecture and he really, really hadn’t wanted to try and explain himself. ‘ So I know I just got done being rescued and useless and you told me to be safe and not-die, but—'
+
It started from a small thing.
It was—it was such a small thing.
Just cleaning a beach.
It was dark by the time Izuku stopped walking aimlessly and headed for home. When he passed Dagoba beach.
When he heard the voices.
“It’s a shame, really. The beach used to be something to look at when we first got here. But now–”
“Now it certainly looks like something .”
And Izuku stopped in place, frozen to the ground and for no good reason, he thought , I can fix that.
There was a lot Izuku couldn’t do. Like. A lot a lot. (A loooooooot.)
A lot.
But—
But one person’s one little wish? Of seeing a clean beach again?
I can do that.
x
In the light of day, Dagoba Beach was… messy . (Or, literally a dump. Like, literally. )
But that wasn’t… News to Izuku. It had been like that for as long as he could remember. He walked past here almost every day. And somehow, it still completely slipped past him how bad it was? Because that… that was a car. There was an actual literal car left, defunct, on the beach.
What even?
What. Even.
Trash, okay. Old furniture, sure. Appliances, even, somewhat understandable.
But a whole entire vehicle?
+
Couldn’t breathe sludge down his throat—
He’d been getting flashes like that, too, ever since—
Well. Ever since.
But. But they only lasted a second or two, usually. Really, no different than his usual rapid-fire slideshow of thoughts.
…that should be worrying, shouldn’t it? That he was having traumatic flashbacks essentially indistinguishable from his regular thought processes. That felt like something he should probably be worried about.
x
[After meeting the two voices he’d heard that night, Izuku visits their shop by the beach when taking a break from cleaning.]
[Getting startled out of a mutter storm by some advice.]
“You know a lot about fighting,” Izuku mumbled, intentionally, for once. So it could be easily ignored if desired. “Are you an ex-pro hero or something?”
“ I—” Urahara-san said with great dignity and greater emphasis, “—am but a simple shopkeeper.”
Izuku only began turning his head.
“Don’t look at me,” Yoruichi-san said, regally, between paw-licks. “I’m just a cat.”
And All Might was ‘just some guy.’
x
“Kitten's back,” Yoruichi-san murmured beside him and Kisuke hummed.
Like a feral cat—and wasn’t that an apt descriptor of the flighty, scared, wary boy?— their half-wild teenager had been staying around for steadily increasing periods of time.
It didn’t escape either of them that he pocketed all candy given to him for later disposal or consumption. He neither bought nor accepted food, but he would eat with them when he brought his own bento—presuming only that it had been in arms reach or eyesight the entire time.
Never too close, and always, always watching. Always carefully testing and retreating back, ready to turn and flee at the first—the only —wrong move.
A first and only wrong move that they never made, and, slowly, day by day, stopped being expected. They comforted the way they could, befriended in the way only gentle, careful apathy could. Friends could be dangerous, strangers in vans offering candy and cats here, small child, here.
But for a wounded thing, ignorance and space was as good as friendship and acceptance.
Their Berry-tan so obviously wanted to help so much it hurt . But he did not trust anyone who seemed inclined to help him. Not unless they were pros, because it was a pro hero’s job to care.
And, as Kisuke and Yoruichi had told him before, they weren’t heroes.
There was no getting around the matter, there was no flowery language that would disguise it: their kitten was broken. He was broken and scrabbling after the pieces of himself, trying to hold them together even when they cut and made him bleed for it.
And still. And still he smiled and he tried to help.
x
It was a month or so in that things changed. Izuku came in… Wrong. It wasn’t something specific Kisuke could name, just that he looked at the world around him with all of hell in his eyes.
That day, Izuku worked until his fingers blistered and bled, ran until his feet cracked, until Yoruichi forced him to stop.
That day, he didn’t have a bento of his own, and when Kisuke offered lunch, for the first time, he didn’t refuse.
No, he tore into the food with a reckless fervor that nearly bordered on desperate. Halfway through the meal, silent tears began tracking down his cheeks, leaving silver trails on his face. He wiped at them absently, but never stopped eating, never looked up at them. They made no mention of it.
That night, Yoruichi-san returned home with a newspaper article, about a young Quirkless girl who’d died by suicide, and a murmured word about the small shrine that had been set up between the shoten and Aldera Middle School, with a bento left as an offering.
+
The next day, when their wayward child came back, having suffered neither a roofie-blackout nor food poisoning, something in their relationship snapped into place and settled into a new shape.
x
“I like strawberries.”
And with that utterly inexplicable and uninformative non-sequitur out of the way, Izuku began training.
x
“You need more stamina,” Yoruichi-san commented.
And, well, Izuku could hardly argue with that assessment. “What do you think I should do?”
For future reference, seeing a cat mouth smile its best approximation of a human smile? Incredibly unnerving.
“Run.”
Izuku ran.
x
Yoruichi-san's voice was incredibly deep for a girl—woman? How old was Yoruichi-san? How did cats age, exactly?—but that wasn’t really any of his business. Urahara-san referred to Yoruichi-san as she and her and he probably knew Yoruichi-san better than Izuku and Yoruichi-san hadn’t protested anything or seemed annoyed (cats tended to flick their tails when they got agitated, the opposite of dogs). So.
So.
x
Urahara-san leaned over him, eyes shadowed under the brim of his hat. “And how are we feeling?”
Izuku considered that carefully for a bit, then tentatively offered, “Ow?”
Urahara-san's fan opened in front of his mouth and fluttered back and forth. “'Ow' is probably right. And this is why we don’t fold our thumbs inside our fingers when making a punch. Now, how badly does it hurt?”
Again, Izuku considered himself carefully. “Uhhh, more than stubbing my toe, but less than that time I—” Was pushed. “—fell out of a tree and broke my arm.”
“Mm. Well, luckily no broken bones this time~ This particular brand of ‘ow' is called ‘a dislocated joint'.”
“…I’ll remember that.”
Flutter went the fan. “Oh, yes, I imagine you will.”
x
If Izuku didn’t trust his kind-of-teachers, he’d be utterly convinced they were trying to kill him.
But he did. He did trust them.
So he was only… Minorly worried they were trying to kill him.
Mildly concerned.
Still. “Are you trying to kill me?”
Urahara-san hummed. “Either we’re trying to kill you, in which case we’re doing very badly. Or we’re not, and we’re doing pretty well at it.”
Which as an answer was— okay, fair.
But somehow not very comforting.
x
It took him time and multiple repetitions sometimes, but Izuku did learn his lessons, really, he did.
After All Might, he never again asked anyone else (did not ask Urahara-san or Yoruichi-san) if a Quirkless person could be a hero.
Izuku learned his lessons. He was done asking other people if he could be a hero. They couldn’t make him a hero even if they—if they had —said yes. In the end, the only one who could determine whether Izuku could be a hero or not was Izuku.
(And Izuku said yes. Or else. )
x
“Why are you wasting so much energy trying to hit me, Kitten?”
“Because I’m—am I… Am I not supposed to be hitting you?”
“No, you definitely are. And yet… So I ask again: why are you expending so much energy in the attempt?”
“You’re… You’re hard to hit. Be-because you’re fast. And— and small?” He winced, hoping that last bit wasn’t offensive.
But Yoruichi-san’s tail flicked… was that approvingly? “Yes. And because I am both those things, I’m forcing you to spend far more energy trying to hit me than I’m spending trying to avoid those hits. And so, too, will you, eventually. If you learn nothing else from us, learn this:
“There is always someone stronger out there.”
Izuku thought back to that horrifying wound in All Might’s side—and shivered. He nodded. “So I need to… to learn how to conserve my energy, right? If I want to be a hero, I can’t afford to get tired out in the middle of a fight or rescue when there might be other enemies or civilians that need me.”
“Pre cisely .” Yes, that was definitely a pleased tail-flick. Which was then followed up by a breath-stealing jump onto his chest that forced all the air from his lungs. “Lesson number two: it takes less energy to dodge or redirect an attack than to block one. Name me three additional reasons this is desirable.”
“Um.” Something flashed behind his eyes and Izuku could smell burning caramel. “Because a hit might not be just a hit, if it has a Quirk—or… Or a weapon behind it. Because… because it’s not just stamina; an injury will mess with your fighting ability more than lack of energy will? Because… you might be protecting something else you also don’t want to risk being damaged? Like—like if you were carrying a civilian! Or maybe a volatile substance.”
x
But would it be rude to ask—?
“Well, you won’t know that unless you do ask?”
Next question: did Urahara-san have a mind-reading Quirk, or had Izuku just been mumbling again? “Uhhh. Y-Yoruichi-san, do you— Are you an animal with an intelligence Quirk, or a human with an animal Quirk?”
Yoruichi-san contemplated their fish. “Yes.”
Izuku sweatdropped. …okay, I maybe deserved that.
“What are humans if not animals?” Urahara-san asked, and the rest of lunch quickly devolved into a debate on the philosophy of personhood.
x
When his mother asked what kept him out so late so often, Izuku said, “I’m doing extra after school studies, to get ready for entrance exams.”
It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t.
x
The day they stood before the beach, entirely cleaned of trash and junk, Izuku pulled in a shaky breath through trembling lips. “My name,” he said, after ten months, “is Midoriya Izuku.”
Urahara-san tilted his head down, hand on his hat. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Izu-kun.”
Yoruichi-san’s tail twitched with a motion Izuku knew meant satisfaction. “Thank you for your trust, Izuku.”
Izuku blew out another breath and turned to face them with a tremulous smile. “Thank you for all your help.”
Yoruichi-san dismissively flicked an ear. “I’m pretty sure I should be the one thanking you. Thank you, Izuku. I was unconvinced I’d ever see this beach in this state again.”
Urahara-san’s fan made an appearance. “Think nothing of it. You helped us just as much. Why don’t you come in and we’ll have lunch to celebrate?”
+
“You’ve shown us a great deal of trust today. And I’m going to ask for just a bit more, now. With UA's entrance exams just a week away, what are your plans for getting in, Midoriya Izuku?”
Those words felt far too weighted for any brash answer. He swallowed hard. “I—”
He looked between them, saw that same waiting silence he’d been seeing for ten months.
“You know.”
“That you’re Quirkless? Yes.”
“Ho-how long?”
“Kisuke suspected right from the very beginning. But we became sure that first day you had lunch with us.”
The day after Kida Aiko had killed herself. The day Izuku had set up a shrine for her on the side of the road because he knew that no one else would. When he’d left his bento for her in some vague hope of it helping her spirit, wherever it was, get some tiny little speck of peace.
“You never showed.”
Urahara-san's fan clicked shut, showing his whole face clearly. “It never mattered.”
Izuku's breath hitched.
Yoruichi-san put a paw on his leg and Izuku realized he was shaking. “You didn’t need a Quirk to clean up the beach and make my wish come true. And you didn’t need a Quirk to save that angry child on live television last year.”
Izuku's laugh was a little breathless and a lot choked.
Urahara-san laid his fan on the table between them. “You won’t need one to get into UA, either.”
Izuku opened his mouth, didn’t say anything. Closed it again.
If he didn’t trust his kind-of-teachers—
But.
But he did trust them. They knew—they’d known. And they—there had been so many opportunities , and they’d never once hurt him. Not really.
Izuku had had people be nice to him before. Hands held out with smiles that turned to laughter and claws the moment his back was turned. It’d lasted a month, once. Before the pretty illusion had shattered like stained glass.
Ten months was a long time to make fun of a Quirkless child, though. To help and prepare him for a fake chance at success while quietly building failure in the background. And Izuku—
Izuku was tired. He was tired of the bone-deep wariness he couldn’t shake off every time somebody smiled at him, wondering if they knew , how they’d act around him if they did. And—
He wanted to trust. He had to trust sometime and he wanted it to be here and now.
Izuku took a deep breath, and reached out.
“I was planning on—on not lying, but. Quirk status isn’t, actually, explicitly required.”
“Hmm.”
+
“Whether such moral labels as ‘good' or ‘bad' can be applied to the situation, above all, UA's methods are useful and they are effective. ”
“It’s all about—oh, how would our friendly neighborhood scarecrow put it?” Yoruichi-san drawled. “'Looking underneath the underneath.’”
+
(Izuku never asked if Urahara-san or Yoruichi-san thought he could be a hero without a Quirk.)
(They said yes anyway.)
XXX