Chapter Text
Izuku Midoriya looked down at the empty street below, where autumn leaves flew and swirled into little piles beneath the trees.
At another point in his life, he would’ve run downstairs just to kick them into the air above his head and spin around until he collapsed onto the ground buried in brown, orange leaves and carefree giggles.
He had always loved autumn for its cold evenings, warm colors, and the sound of rain hitting his bedroom window. But he also loved spring for the flowers that painted the world with color, summer because the sun filled him with energy, and winter for the snow and the chance to curl up under a blanket in the safety of his home.
He had loved everything. Back then, his heart had been so full of love that he’d started to believe one day it would burst out of his chest just to show the world its innocent affection for life.
Now he could barely feel it beating inside him, broken, wounded, and so tired of fighting that it would probably give out at any moment.
That gave him one more reason to step closer to the edge. He’d rather let himself fall onto the asphalt before that happened, before the little that remained of him dissolved completely into the darkness that kept his soul trapped in constant agony.
A scoff behind him made his whole body tense. For a moment, he thought Kacchan was standing there, ready to give him one last beating before Izuku followed his advice and threw himself toward the ending he deserved, because the story of a useless, quirkless nobody couldn’t possibly end any other way.
But when he turned his head, he found himself staring into a pair of cold blue eyes belonging to a man with black hair and purple scars covering his face. His expression held annoyance and a faint kind of morbid curiosity that slipped into his voice when he spoke.
“Of course a brat had to pick this rooftop to kill himself. Like there aren’t thousands of others in this damn city.” His tone was rough and scratchy. “What happened, pipsqueak? Your girlfriend dumped you? Mommy grounded you for a month and you think you can’t survive it?”
The words dripped with a poisonous mix of mockery and sarcasm that dug into Izuku’s already torn-up pride like another thorn.
“N-No… nothing like that” he answered in a voice barely above a whisper, timid and exhausted all at once, genuinely answering the mockery despite how pathetic it sounded, because anything a pathetic loser said would sound pathetic anyway. “If I’m bothering you, I can go somewhere else. Sorry”
Did he really have to apologize even for trying to do the world a favor?
Apparently, if you were Izuku Midoriya, yes.
If the man had been expecting an answer, Izuku was pretty sure it hadn’t been that one, judging by the way his eyebrows lifted for a second before his face slipped back into lazy indifference and he slowly walked closer to the edge where Izuku stood leaning.
“I don’t really care. Seeing some kid splattered on the pavement isn’t gonna ruin my day”
The man leaned against the railing on the other side of where Izuku stood, only inches away, separated by nothing but metal, the thin barrier between life and death..
“But I could use something entertaining while I smoke.”
With that, he lit a cigarette using blue flames from his finger.
“So don’t leave me hanging. Why do you wanna kill yourself?”
Izuku’s gaze got stuck on the man's finger. Does he have a fire quirk? Why is it blue? Fire quirks like Endeavor’s usually have normal flames… could it have something to do with the physical components his body uses to create the fire? Like Kacchan’s sweat being nitroglycerin? Or was it the temperature? He’d read on some blog once that fire turns blue at really high temperatures… but then wouldn’t that make it even stronger than Endeavor’s? Were those burns caused by his quirk?
The thought process cut off abruptly when he realized he’d started mumbling aloud, and his fingers were even moving through the air without his notebook to write in.
His cheeks flushed red and he lowered his head, waiting for mockery, insults, or a hit that never came.
When he finally dared to glance up through messy green curls, he found a raised eyebrow and a confused but neutral expression, not a trace of the anger or disgust that painted his classmates' faces every time his muttering slipped out among voices far louder than his, but somehow allowed to exist.
His voice didn’t even have the right to exist. He himself didn’t have the right to exist.
The stranger’s last question echoed in his head. He hesitated between telling the truth or lying, but in the end, he couldn’t see the point of lying anymore.
If in a few minutes his body was going to be scattered across the sidewalk, then at least he could satisfy the man’s curiosity. At least the meaningless tragedy that had been his life could serve as some morbid afternoon entertainment.
“I’m quirkless,” he muttered, looking away again, toward the street below.
For a moment, he thought that would be enough explanation. That the other man would nod in understanding and let him finally let go of the rooftop. But apparently the man was more bored than he looked, because he kept staring at him expectantly while black smoke curled from his mouth.
“That’s why my dad abandoned me. That’s why my mom cries every night blaming herself for the way I was born. That’s why Kacchan stopped being my friend. That’s why my classmates torture me every day. That’s why the teachers encourage and defend them. That’s why anyone who sees my stupid red shoes thinks they have the right to do whatever they want to me…”
His murmurs turned into choked sobs as he spiraled, unconsciously loosening his grip on the railing and leaning further into the empty air below.
“And that’s why I can’t be a hero either,” he finished while tears freely slid down his cheeks as he remembered the way he’d ended up on this unfamiliar rooftop. “Even All Might said it. You can’t be a hero without a quirk.”
He waited a couple minutes for the man to say something, maybe look at him with uncomfortable pity like his mom always does, or tell him he deserved it. Honestly, he didn’t even know which would hurt him more anymore.
But he was met only with silence and the stranger’s slightly darkened gaze.
Izuku took it as an invitation to keep talking and continued, speaking more to the wind than to the black-haired man beside him.
“Even if I give up on my dream of being a hero… I still wouldn’t be able to get into any other school because they all reject quirkless people, and I won’t be able to get a job either. I’ll just keep being a burden to my mom and a nuisance to society. There’s no point in being alive”.
It was the first time he’d ever said those thoughts out loud after carrying them around in his head for so long. Hearing himself say them in such a broken, empty voice felt both freeing and horribly depressing.
“Why do you wanna be a hero?” the man interrupted suddenly, making Izuku nearly let go of the railing from how hard he flinched.
He turned toward him and thought about the question for a moment before the answer came easily to his lips.
“Because I want to save people with a smile,” he answered, just like he’d repeated to himself so many times before.
“When I was little, I used to watch All Might on TV and thought he was incredible. I wanted to be like him because he was the strongest. Then after I got my diagnosis, I started watching videos of him whenever I felt sad. His smile made me feel like everything would be okay, and I decided I wanted to do the same… I wanted people to look at me and feel like everything would turn out alright.”
He could feel his own melancholic smile stretching across his tear-stained face.
“But lately I thought maybe I could also be the hero who proved that your quirk doesn’t matter, that it doesn’t matter if you’re biologically weaker than everyone else… t-that the only thing that matters is wanting to save people. I thought I could be that example and change the way society sees people with different quirks or no quirk at all. Now I know I was wrong.”
He finished with a defeated tone, and the man’s eyes stayed locked onto his with such intensity that a chill ran down his spine.
“If people stopped thinking like that, if they stopped judging everyone by their quirks, the world would be a little less shitty. Or maybe they’d just find something else to attack. Who knows.”
The man simply shrugged, finishing his cigarette and flicking it off the rooftop.
The two of them watched it fall all the way down, disappearing against the asphalt until it stopped existing to their eyes. Izuku thought that soon enough, he’d be making that same descent himself.
“I’m Dabi, by the way,” the stranger introduced himself.
Izuku was pretty sure that wasn’t his real name, but he didn’t comment on it.
“I’m Izuku,” he replied, only giving his first name too. Maybe he should’ve made up a fake one, but he couldn’t think of anything.
Another hour passed up there. His hands never loosened from the railing again, and he didn’t even notice when, at some point during that time, he stepped back onto the safe side of it. His feet firmly on solid ground.
He only realized it after he’d already said goodbye to Dabi and was walking back home, his body moving on autopilot.
His body had decided to keep living without him even noticing.
And somehow… he didn’t mind as much as he probably should have.
After all, he could always try again tomorrow… Or maybe run into a certain pair of blue eyes again instead.