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Heroes aren’t supposed to cry.
This is something the world has told him since he can really remember, another arrow in the quiver of reasons he could never be one; too small, too much of a crybaby, no quirk.
As the tears drip down and pool on the ground where he lays, battered and bruised and tired after a run-in with some… unsavoury students, he thinks that it’s a good thing he’s not a hero, will never be a hero, because the tears never seem to stop.
—
The Midoriyas have always been a family of criers.
According to his mom, she and his dad had both cried themselves into terrible headaches when he was born, and he had joined right in. Apparently one of the nurses had joked that there was no doubt they were related, because all three of them had been crying so hard in the exact same way.
He remembered that, at four years old, when his mom got a call from his dad, and learned that he wouldn’t be coming back, her tears had not stopped for what felt like weeks.
He and his mom had both been nearly inconsolable when they found out he was quirkless. He remembered it in a way that was weirdly detached, and remembered feeling… numb was the best way he could put it, like he was feeling so much all at once that he felt almost nothing. What he did remember was the sound of his mom sobbing into his t-shirt as she apologised over and over while his own tears streamed down his cheeks, the only thing he could really feel.
Both of them had wept when the kind old neighbour, Fukumoto-san, passed away. It had been peaceful, and almost inevitable, but he had been their friend, and so for several weeks they had been on a hair trigger, crying at any tiny reminder or bittersweet memory.
His mom cried a lot, but she also had many years of practice in holding back, of managing her tears and emotions, where Izuku did not, and so regardless of how easily the both of them cried, Izuku would always win in a competition of ‘which Midoriya cries the most’.
Every time he scraped his knee, every time he saw something sad, every time the other kids had been mean, no matter how hard he tried to hold it in, tried to hide it, he always ended up crying, either on his own or to his mom.
No matter how good he got at hiding his injuries and telling half-truths, he always cried. He just managed to learn to make it less obvious why.
—
This definitely didn’t change when he met All Might.
It was something his new mentor had known from the start, because of course he burst into tears as soon as All Might had offered him One For All and he had processed what that meant.
The man didn’t bring it up very often, only occasionally gently teasing him about it, but it wasn’t some guilty secret. Sometimes when Izuku would feel like his lungs were about to explode out of his chest, or he would get a scrape from his trash-hauling workout, tears would spring to his eyes on reflex, and All Might would take that as a sign to slow down for just a moment, or take a moment to put a band-aid over any injuries, but the tears were never mentioned.
Izuku became comfortable crying in front of All Might, and sometimes, All Might cried too.
—
Before starting at UA, Izuku had thought he had experienced every single reason you could have to cry.
Oh boy was he proven wrong.
Within the first two months, he had cried in pain, in happiness, in sadness, in fear and in relief. He had teared up in frustration, and anger, and disappointment, and his friends had been right there with him more often than he could have ever imagined.
He even saw Kacchan shed tears of anger. At LEAST twice. Which was very strange.
He was crying just as much as he ever had, but where in the past, he had had felt shame and fear and a sense of needing to hide, of needing to stay strong like a hero would, now crying felt like relief, like a washing away of emotions too big for him to hold, an expression of his determination to become the best hero he could.
—
Rescuing Eri was a major thing for Izuku, in more ways than one.
There were all the obvious things: it was his first major mission, the first thing he did after obtaining his licence, the first time he had saved someone who had not been directly involved in his life already, but there were also other, smaller moments.
She was still in his life afterwards, and so he got to see her come out of her shell, he got to see how the actions of the heroes (he had been one of them!) changed her life for the better.
He also saw her bad days.
He saw her catatonic, saw her scared, saw her smile like she didn’t mean it, but he never really saw her cry.
He was curious, and so he asked her why.
“Because heroes aren’t supposed to cry.”
He had no idea where she had heard that, but he immediately decided that he would shut it down for her like it never really had been for him, remembering all the shame and the teasing from his own childhood.
“Why not?”
Eri took a moment to think, and then answered haltingly,
“Because they don't?”
Izuku chuckled softly, before pointing at where some of his friends were chatting softly in another corner of the room, “they cry sometimes,” he pointed to himself, “I cry a LOT,” he pointed at Present Mic, doing… something in front of a mirror, “he cries whenever he sees a bug,” he smiled as Eri giggled, “and we’re all heroes.”
It still felt strange to call himself a hero, but as he saw her nod decisively, he felt that off feeling leave his chest.
“Oh! Okay then!” Eri said, before asking Izuku if he wanted to play tea party with her.
Later that night, when Izuku lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take him, he thought over that interaction and his own feelings about it.
He wanted things to be different, for kids to feel like they didn’t have to hide their tears, the opposite to what he had been told, and he decided that he would definitely try and cry on camera at some point, just to change that one small phrase, even if only for just one person.
He thinks back to when he was on the ground, hurt and crying, and, despite his forced optimism, how he thought he would never be a hero. He’s glad he could prove himself wrong.
Because heroes do cry, and there’s nothing wrong with that.