Work Text:
Fic Inspiration:
Being a Pro-Hero often meant hard work, long hours, and the chance to meet people from all walks of life. At least, being an Underground Hero meant all of that. Shouta didn’t really know what life was like for a Limelight hero, and frankly, he didn’t want to know. His longest shifts were often the hardest, and not because of exhaustion. He was exhausted, of course, but Shouta’s natural, neutral state included exhaustion. The reason his longest shifts were the worst was because of all the criminals and villains he encountered.
Shouta had become a Pro-Hero straight out of UA High at eighteen. Tomorrow, he turned thirty-three. Fifteen years in the underground had taken its toll on his body, and his mind. The field of Underground Heroics didn’t often keep heroes around this long. Shouta was one of the oldest, longest running underground heroes on record. There were only five underground agencies in the country. Shouta ran the Musutafu office with his police partner, Naomasa Tsukauchi. Lately, though, he’d been considering retirement from heroics. The schedule didn’t matter, the exhaustion and constant cuts and bruises weren’t an issue, Shouta didn’t hate his job or mind the side effects.
The problem was that Shouta had started to empathize with the criminals and villains he fought and captured. He’d never swap sides, of course. Shouta had a very firm grip on morality and the letter of the law. But he understood what had driven these criminals to dire straits all too well. Poverty, discrimination, and quirkism. He could spend hours listing out all the reasons these criminals committed crimes. If the world changed, maybe they wouldn’t need heroes to stop the villains. Maybe there wouldn’t be villains, or at least, not as many. But that wouldn’t happen, and even if the government did revert back to a pre-hero world, there would still be poverty and crime.
Shouta just got back from patrol. It was three am when he walked into his bathroom with the intention of taking a shower before climbing into bed with his husband, Hizashi. But he found himself staring into his own eyes in the bathroom mirror instead.
He’d arrested a petty criminal with a gun quirk as the last catch of the evening. He’d held up one of those 24 hour pay-day loan offices. The guy barely even put up a fight once Shouta got his capture scarf around him. He’d just broken down and sobbed into the floor - he fell apart. He’d hit rock bottom. With no help, no support and no education - he couldn’t get a job and his quirk was deemed ‘villainous’ since the day it manifested.
Shouta understood his position too deeply.
As a child, Shouta had been ostracized for his quirk. He’d been labeled a villain who would steal everyone else’s quirk. The bullying got so bad he came close to killing himself once or twice. But his resolve to prove them wrong drove him to become a Pro-Hero. He shoved his nose into a grindstone to ensure he got top marks in school and won every scholarship and award he could to afford going to UA. Even being initially placed in GenEd hadn’t been a deterrent. Shouta worked his ass off to get into the hero course and graduate as a Pro-Hero. But not everyone gets all the chances and luck Shouta had in life. Some people, like that villain Shouta arrested, ended up on the streets with only the clothes on their backs.
There was absolutely nothing Shouta could do to change the outcome of this criminal’s life. No matter how hard he wanted to help, he couldn’t pull someone out of poverty, he couldn’t afford to educate them, he couldn’t end quirk discrimination, but he couldn’t let them break the law, either.
Shouta’s quirk flared to life. He watched his eyes light up, bright red in the darkened bathroom, as his hair floated loosely around his head. They’d never really figured out why that happened but the quirk specialists assumed he had some kind of electromagnetic field around himself when his quirk was active. Pain followed quickly after he activated his quirk. He couldn’t cancel himself, obviously, but his quirk tried anyway. It felt like a butcher’s knife to the back of the brain anytime he caught himself in a mirror or reflective surface like glass. It’s why his goggles didn’t have glass, just thin bars to protect him while also allowing him to see.
Some nights, Shouta wondered if he stared into a mirror long enough, he’d manage to break his own quirk factor. When his quirk manifested, he couldn’t get it to shut off. One of his classmates froze up, terrified when their mutant quirk started going haywire. Shouta watched, horrified, unable to blink or look away, as that girl writhed in pain as Erasure melted her quirk factor. When it ended, and his quirk finally allowed him to blink again, his eyes in a dry agony, the girl was a coiled, twisted husk on the ground. She was alive. Barely. They’d both been rushed to the hospital.
Shouta had bandages over his face for days to prevent him from activating his quirk while his eyes healed from the damage his manifestation caused. The girl he accidentally tortured survived but she was severely disfigured by what Shouta’s quirk did to her. That’s how the rumors started, how he was slapped with a villain label before even leaving elementary school. The accident was handwaved as a quirk manifestation accident, which is protected under the Quirk Compassion Act.
Shouta still visits her every year on the anniversary of the manifestation, on his birthday. He was visiting her tomorrow. Outside of federal holidays, Shouta’s birthday was the only day he took off work. To this day, no one knows why he does it. No one knows why he refused to celebrate his birthday, either, not even Hizashi. Not even his parents. Shouta had kept this secret for almost thirty years. No one could find out as the manifestation didn’t even make the news back then, most manifestations didn’t unless they caused a disturbance to the public like a roadblock or a building collapse.
But the manifestation of Shouta’s quirk had brought his whole world down in one crumbling act. From that day on, he knew there was something ruined about him, something violent and festering. It’s why he’d started the rumor that his quirk wouldn’t work on Mutant types, and why he refused to ever look at another mutant with his quirk active - and he could tell, too. His quirk was a lot more complicated than he’d ever allowed anyone to know, not even his childhood quirk analysts and doctors. Even while active, he could choose when to cancel a quirk or not. When active, it printed out information in his mind about quirk types and quirk stats such as primary functions, strengths and weaknesses, it even pinpointed activation points.
That’s how he knew Shigaraki had a five point touch activation when he’d stormed the USJ, and he knew if that villain got even one hand on his students, they’d be dead in seconds. It’s why he refused to allow that Nomu to knock him unconscious, even with crushed arms and a bleeding face. It’s why he knew Midoriya was hiding something about his quirk - because he didn't have a quirk factor at all. He was a blank slate. He was quirkless, and that’s exactly what Erasure printed out for him in his mind. But clearly, the kid wasn’t quirkless anymore, so how did he get a quirk? Maybe he should ask, or maybe he should leave it alone. He could still cancel the teen, even without a quirk factor, so no one would know the difference…except Shouta.
Shouta pressed his fingers to the mirror to trace his facial features in reverse. Slowly, his eyes blinked. The pain subsided for a second and returned violently when he opened his eyes again. The knife lodged in the base of his skull returned. His quirk kept printing out the same information over and over.
Erasure. Erasure. Erasure. Erase. Erase. Cancel. Cancel. Kill. Kill. Kill. Destroy. Quirk factor unable to be destroyed. Look away. Look away!
Shouta’s fist slammed into the mirror as a scream tore itself out of his lungs. The tinkling of glass and a spray of blood coated the sink in front of him. One large shard hung from the top of the mirror, reflecting only one eye and half his face.
He couldn’t cancel his own quirk, and he couldn’t destroy his own quirk factor. Sometimes, he wished he could. On the days when his quirk screamed in the back of his mind and begged, nagged, howled at him to cancel, to take, TAKE, TAKE - he wished he could have blinded himself years ago. But in the same way your brain won’t allow you to bite off your own finger, Shouta’s brain refused to let him cause any damage to his eyes, no matter how close he came to doing it every once in a while.
Shouta pressed the fingers of his undamaged hand into his temple and finally looked away from the broken mirror. He couldn’t stand to take on these agonizingly long nights. They were a hazard to his mental health, and fighting his quirk for thirty years was more exhausting than his unwanted empathy for villains. But even worse than that, he was alone in this fight. He’d allowed himself to become lonely because he couldn’t trust anyone with this burden, the weight of his guilt and the way his own quirk haunted him like a ghost lingering over his shoulder every day.
No one deserved to walk around with this kind of pressure on their cerebral cortex.
This was Shouta’s burden to bear; Eraserhead’s fight, even.
No one else should have to look themselves in the eye and remind themselves why they were here to begin with, why they had chosen this path in life. He could have decided to work in a homeless shelter, or hell, even at a clinic for people with ill-fit to physical form quirks. Perhaps that would have been a better use of Erasure. But no, Shouta had chosen a harder path. And maybe that meant it was the only path he should walk, since it mattered so much to him.
When he looked up into the broken mirror, his quirk had deactivated, leaving him to stare at himself between strands of long black hair that desperately needed to be washed. He searched for his own eyes in that sliver of reflective glass in front of him, feeling nothing of the cuts on his hand or the aching migraine already brewing behind his temples.
Is this all that would remain of Shouta when he finally retired; a husk, just like the very first quirk Erasure destroyed? The hollowness of his chest made his shoulders curl inwards. Bloody fingers clutched his shirt. Despite the stranglehold this despair had on his throat, his body refused to cry. He hadn’t cried since Oboro’s death, he hadn’t allowed himself to break since the last time the world broke him.
“Shou?” A frail voice called from the doorway. Hizashi .
Shouta gasped and straightened his back, but he found he couldn’t move away from the sink, or the mirror he’d broken. Shouta’s husband approached him hesitantly, as if approaching a rabid, cornered animal. It took several seconds just for him to walk into the bathroom and close the distance between them. When he did, Hizashi looked at the broken mirror first, then Shouta’s bloody hand still clawing his own chest. The blonde tilted his head to the side when he found Shouta’s eyes again. His hands lifted, an open offer that Shouta couldn’t take, not right now, not yet, not until he felt human again. But Hizashi was undeterred. He stepped forward, until their bodies almost touched. Gentle hands cupped Shouta’s face and his quirk flared to life again. Hizashi leaned back, startled, but he didn’t back down. He didn’t run away or scream in terror of the monster in front of him.
Hizashi wasn’t scared of Shouta. He was staring into the darkness, and Shouta knew it, because his quirk was currently trying to attack Hizashi - he had to feel the pain - he stared into that darkness and smiled.
“Close your eyes, love.” The order was offered so softly, Shouta swore he’d have missed it if he hadn’t also been reading his husband’s lips. It took every ounce of strength Shouta had left in his body, but he managed to close his eyes and deactivate his quirk before it could hurt the man he loved.
Hizashi brought their faces together so they were touched from forehead to chin. Shouta couldn’t force himself to reach out and touch Hizashi for fear he might cause the man harm. So he clutched the sink edge with his good hand and his shirt in the other, he stood still in case moving might cause his husband some kind of pain. The hands on his face slipped down to the back of his neck, they tilted his face up until his lips met Hizashi’s. This was far from the first time he felt sparks fly between their lips, but he’d needed it so desperately, he swore he’d never felt a kiss like this before, and he might never again.
“ You’re my hero .” Hizashi whispered against his lips when the kiss finally broke. Shouta’s hands went slack at his sides. Hizashi pulled him closer. “But it’s time to come home now. Patrol is over, Shouta. Come back to me, please.”
He nodded slowly as a deep breath exhaled from his lungs. Finally, he opened his eyes to find bright golden sunbeams staring back at him.
“Shou?”
“Mmm- here.”
“Where’d you go?”
Shouta shook his head. “Bad memories. Tomorrow is-”
“Your birthday.”
“Yeah…I think I’m just…questioning how lucky I got in life. The last criminal tonight, he- …he sobbed into the ground when I captured him holding up a loan office. He was desperate, broke, rock bottom. Why do I…if even one thing had changed in my life, I’d be in his place.”
“Oh Shou - that’s not true.”
“It is!” Shouta gently pried his husband’s hands from his neck and collapsed onto the edge of the bathtub behind himself. Maybe it was time to just…tell someone the truth. Maybe they wouldn’t have to carry it as a burden - or maybe he shouldn’t carry it alone. “When my quirk manifested…I almost killed one of my classmates.”
“But Erasure isn’t-”
“I can attack quirk factors. I know you just felt it.” Hizashi looked away. He’d been second guessing himself, but he felt it. “She’s still alive, but bed-bound in a nursing home since we were kids. ‘Zashi, my quirk manifested on my fourth birthday.”
The blonde’s head lifted, shock and realization struck him hard enough to make the voice hero grab the sink beside himself. “That’s…that’s why you don’t…”
“I don’t celebrate my birthday because I visit her every year, and we just…talk. It’s not friendship - it's atonement. If my manifestation hadn’t been protected, I’d be a criminal. I’d be the one holding up the loan office. I’d be on my ass, alone, with nothing but the clothes on my back and the guilt I still carry.”
“But you aren’t a criminal, Shou. You’re a hero. You’re my hero.”
“But I’ll never be her hero. I’ll always be the villain that disfigured her. I’ll always be guilty of at least one quirk being destroyed.”
Hizashi didn’t have a reply to that. He only sighed as he joined Shouta on the edge of the tub. They settled into an uncomfortable silence for a while. Hizashi let his head fall onto Shouta’s shoulder. They were too low to see through the broken mirror. Shouta was actually happy about that. He wasn’t sure he could face his husband’s broken hearted, sad eyes right now. Instead, he listened to the wobble in the man’s voice when he finally spoke.
“You should ask her tomorrow.”
“Hmm?”
“Ask her, Shouta. Ask her if she thinks you’re a villain.” Hizashi pulled Shouta’s face down with a finger under his chin. “She might surprise you.”
Shouta placed a delicate kiss on his husband’s forehead. “Sometimes, you surprise me too. Thank you.”