Chapter Text
He could see them from the window on the rare few times he looked outside. Press.
They had taken a while to show up, they weren’t interested in a child-villain until the experiments had been leaked to the news, until someone had told someone who told another about the man made monster with too many quirks.
It wasn’t even like crowd of big named reporter were there, only a few freelancers who thought they could make it big with a story like him.
Noumu hated them.
Those few times he sat by the window with the sun on his clear-pale skin his eyes were drawn down to the gates. Never more than a few. But he could feel them. Like beasts hungry for carrion, waiting for him to walk out and leave himself exposed to their talons.
.
“Why do they bother you?”
“They don’t.”
“Izuku, if you had the chance what would you do to them?”
“Eviscerate them.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I am.”
“If you had the chance would you do the same to me?”
Noumu’s tail twitched as he turned his body so he fully faced the glass. It had been a long time since he had felt the sun properly. He wanted to open it, he thought. He wanted to feel the new air and smell something other than flowers and sanitizer. But he didn’t move an inch.
“I would . . .” He would kill the doctor, he knew he would. “If I was ordered.”
Something about that made his stomach feel gritty and slimy. Why? He didn’t have a choice. He was the creature that he was.
He felt His Doctor smile.
.
When he had asked for it, he had been given permission to go to the small hospital courtyard. With a hero, with a detective, with his mom, and with His Doctor. It was with his mom he elected to curl up beside, his head against her shoulder as the heat of the sun made him feel so very tired. His skin was nearly transparent and it made his skin red, but when he was asked to come along inside he just shook his head.
Noumu liked the way the sun felt, even if it hurt. He liked that, not the pain but the wanting. The comfort of the heat and his mom.
.
The other doctors were angry at His Doctor when he came in peeling and thirsty, but he just wanted to sleep.
.
His Doctor and the other doctor argued about how to undo him.
They had x-rays that showed how the muscles in his arms had been hacked at and cut, how his broken bones had been set incorrectly, and his own attempts at self-mutilation. He could be sewn back together, he surely was in pain.
But he had been operated on so many times already, he required a greater level of trust to proceed or he would close himself off even more. He would make himself untouchable. He had to build the trust in the people around him and understand it was meant to help him.
“Looking human won’t make me human,” Noumu said blandly, “if you undo me then I’ll just be a weapon in a weak body. What is the point of me then?” Slowly, he put his arms around his own skinny waist and curled his tail around him as he hugged himself. “I know it is unpleasant, but it was not done carelessly. Every operation was preformed to account for the physical mutation needed for my quirks. To make me more of what I am. I don’t want to look like Izuku, because I am not him. I am Noumu and this is the form I was born to.”
.
“Midoriya, correct? May I have a word?”
Noumu blinked at the woman in red, interrupting his pleasant doze on the sunlit bench of the courtyard. He curled his soft, human fingers together and he turned his glowing eyes on hers. “I am Noumu.”
She smiled.
“You most certainly are.”
It looked more like a leer.
He swung his legs and let his feet scrape at the damp earth.
“You’re here to take me back.”
“You still have your uses.” She tapped her pen against her paper. She made for an unpleasant reporter, but she was worse in a lab coat. He thought he hated her. “Come along.”
“No.”
A look he didn’t know darkened her face for a moment. “Noumu, you will do as ordered.”
“And yet . . .” Izuku smiled softly. He turned up his head and let the sun fall across his nose and cheeks.
It was so hot, and even through his lids the direct sun made his sensitive eyes hurt. He looked so serene in that moment.
He struck her so hard that he ripped her down to her spine and split her nearly in half.