Chapter Text
Impossibly Izuku is walking down a hallway in UA, wearing the school uniform. Though his is a bit customized; UA is very accommodating to different quirks, so Izuku could request changes to the uniform. He doesn't have a quirk or anything to give as a reason for any changes, but he did it anyway. It did pay off, and now the uniform is a bit bigger, has no tags, and he doesn't have to wear the tie. It's infinitely more comfortable than any uniform Izuku has ever worn.
The thought that drove him to request the uniform adjustments, is pretty much behind his whole attendance at UA; what's the worst that could happen?
Ever since that cursed day when he was four, Izuku's life has consisted of hurt and unreachable dreams. That didn't stop him from dreaming though, no matter how much they tried to beat that out of him. All Izuku has ever wanted is to be a hero.
Then Izuku ended up on a rooftop with All Might. As he has matured, he has stopped admiring the hero so much, seeing his many faults, but he's still the number one hero, his approval has to mean something. Well, it's not like Izuku will ever find out.
"You can't be a hero," joined the piles of, "I'm sorry, baby" and "stupid Deku thinks he can be a hero." Things he has heard for a decade now.
When Izuku, hopeless and lost, stumbled upon Bakugou getting attacked, he for the first time thought: "What's the worst that could happen?" Even though Bakugou is a bully, he doesn't deserve to die for that, and can Izuku even claim to be a hero if he just watches when he can do something?
After getting told to fuck off for saving Bakugou's life, Izuku left the scene just as lost as he felt before it. Before he would have been ecstatic that he got to do something heroic, but what did it matter now? Even All Might said it: he'll never be a hero.
Except the hero took it back. He found Izuku and proceeded to offer him a quirk. The nerve on that man. At first he tells Izuku can't be a hero, and leaves him on a rooftop. Then when Izuku risks his life because he feels so worthless, the hero comes to offer him an easy way out. Even All Might's claim that Izuku's "heroic actions" prove that he's not useless, loses its meaning when he offers Izuku an easy way out.
So Izuku told the hero no.
Somehow that interaction started a chain of events that ended with Izuku training himself to the bone out of pure spite, and signing up for UA's entrance exam. What's the worst that could happen, after all?
While Izuku gave the exam his all, he didn't expect to actually pass. Even if he got enough points, it seemed more likely that UA would just decide they don't need a quirkless loser in their school. Imagine his surprise when a thick envelope with the UA logo and his name drops down from the mail slot.
Izuku fucking passed. There were hidden point systems; rescue points, strategy points, medical points, and Izuku got so many of them. Enough that the letter had the word "congratulations" on it.
So here Izuku is, because what's the worst that could happen? Either he becomes a hero, or he fails miserably and gets expelled. Izuku has nothing else. The only thing at stake is his pride, which has been burned and crushed ages ago.
Finally finding the door with 1-A painted on it, Izuku stops walking. This is it.
Despite the instinct to be nervous, Izuku pushes past that, because he has nothing to lose.
Then Izuku slides the big door open. He knows it's to accommodate for different quirks and stuff, but he's sure the door is massive to cause intimidation too.
Surprisingly Izuku is not first in the room, regardless of how early he is. When the other person notices him, they immediately stand up from their desk and walk to Izuku, who refuses to shrink away.
"Hello! I am Iida Tenya, he/him, from Somei Private Academy," the student says, before giving Izuku a respectful bow.
"Um- hi," Izuku replies, unsure how to proceed. How long has it been since someone has introduced themselves to him? "I'm Midoriya Izuku, he/him," Izuku finally manages to say. Because Iida is steadily holding eye contact, he doesn't notice Izuku's shoes, which must be the reason for his politeness.
Quirkless people have some traits that have evolved out of quirked people. Things like goosebumps, and an extra toe joint. Because of that, normal shoes are uncomfortable, and there's only one kind for them. They're bright red, made to catch attention, but Izuku's are definitely faded and dirty.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Midoriya-kun! If I may ask, why aren't you wearing the uniform properly?" Iida asks. As Izuku looks him over, he realizes why the name Iida sounds familiar. This one looks almost identical to the hero Ingenium, who must be Iida's older brother or something. The Iidas are a big hero legacy family.
"I got permission to wear it like this," Izuku shrugs.
"I understand!" Iida replies, and then a new student enters through the door, taking the boy's attention. Izuku takes the chance to escape to his seat, glancing at the seating chart on the whiteboard.
When Izuku's eyes catch on the name "Bakugou Katsuki," written above his, for a moment he's convinced he's having a heart attack. Of fucking course.
Instead of running away, or bursting into tears, Izuku sits down by his desk, setting his trusty backpack on the floor. It's a yellow old thing, filled with mismatched patches messily sewn on to cover damage. It's been burned, thrown into bodies of water, torn and ripped, but it still persists with Izuku.
To pass time Izuku studies the names on the board. Seems like Iida is not the only legacy kid in the class, there's a Todoroki and a Yaoyorozu with him. Izuku doesn't recognize any other names, but does his best to memorize them.
As more and more students file in, Izuku keeps his eyes steadily forward, only glancing at the newcomers. Like expected, Yaoyorozu immediately starts mingling with Iida, though Todoroki seems uninterested, ignoring both.
With every second that passes, Izuku grows more and more tense, and ten minutes before class is supposed to start, he is half convinced that the other students can hear his pounding heart. It's going to be hell when Bakugou arrives. Still, what kind of a hero would Izuku be if he let some pesky bully control his actions? He's going to have to fight villains and criminals, actually dangerous people. Izuku proceeds to ignore the fact that he can't imagine any person more terrifying than Bakugou.
Of course Bakugou enters the classroom when almost everyone else is already there. Of course Izuku is going to have an audience for this. What's the worst that could happen? Well Izuku's face might get blown off, and he might be publicly humiliated, and then when the teacher enters the chaos, he will be blamed. But none of that is new. Elementary and middle school have been nothing but that, and Izuku is still here.
"Deku?" the insult said in that voice already gives Izuku goosebumps, and he hates it. Just another reminder of how unevolved he is. Even though the signs of pre-quirk traits in the quirkless are minimal, society loves to hang onto each one, and they see those without quirks as useless animals that should have gone extinct.
When discrimination towards the quirkless grew more and more popular, a lot of people used the word primeval to describe them, and soon the quirkless started to be referred to as primates. It became so popular that now the word has two meanings: the original one, and a slur against the quirkless. In a way it's almost funny to Izuku, all humans are primates, but no one cares about that little fact anymore.
Izuku gets violently pulled out of his thoughts when Bakugou slams a hand on his desk. Barely suppressing a flinch, Izuku turns to face the fuming boy.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Bakugou asks, and all Izuku sees in his red eyes is a promise of pain. It all makes him want to cower and cry and apologize, but he won't. Izuku will not shed another tear because of Bakugou, he refuses.
"Guess," is all Izuku says, worried the shaking in his voice would become obvious with any more words. Plus, isn't it obvious what he's doing here?
"Please stop harassing your fellow students!" Iida orders, clearly shocked by Bakugou's actions.
"Fuck off, four eyes! Deku's a primate," Bakugou reveals without hesitation, and even though Izuku isn't looking, unable to turn his gaze away from the burning eyes, he can feel everyone turning to stare at his shoes.
"Maybe they decided to give us a class pet," the person sitting behind Izuku says, Mineta, if he remembers correctly. Humiliation burns in Izuku as a few people snicker at the comment.
"Dude, it's still not cool," Kirishima tries, moving to stand closer to Bakugou, looking between the two with worry.
"Are you stupid? Why the fuck would you defend it?" Mineta asks, while Bakugou fully ignores him.
"I should have fucking killed you in middle school," Bakugou snarls, before raising his hand now popping with explosions.
"Is 'fuck' the only swear word you know?" Izuku can't stop himself from asking. If he's going to die, at least he has finally asked the question he's been thinking about for years now.
Absolutely enraged, Bakugou moves his hand towards Izuku's face, but suddenly his quirk just stops. At first Izuku wonders if some deity decided to gift him with miraculous karma and make Bakugou quirkless as a punishment, but then he sees the person standing in the doorway with red glowing eyes and floating black hair. Eraserhead.
"Bullying and discrimination are strictly prohibited in UA. Mineta, Bakugou, one more mistake and you're both expelled," the hero says in a flat tone, stopping his quirk with a blink when Bakugou whips around to face him.
"Who the fuck are you?!" he demands.
"Your homeroom teacher, Aizawa Shouta, he/him. Now sit down and be quiet," Eraserhead replies, his voice as exhausted as he looks. It's no wonder, the man patrols during the night, and apparently teachers during the day.
Clearly Aizawa has managed to intimidate Izuku's classmates, as everyone immediately moves to their seats. While he wants to be excited that he is being taught by Eraserhead, the man is still a teacher, and Izuku knows better.
As his admiration towards All Might started fading, Izuku quickly focused more on other heroes. Eraserhead, Thirteen, Present Mic, and many more quickly became his favorites. Eraserhead is just insanely awesome, his quirk is fascinating, and just from the shaky clips Izuku dug from the depths of the internet, he has learned that the man is a very good fighter. If life was different, Izuku would be overjoyed by the chance to learn more about the hero.
"Anyway," Aizawa sighs, moving to stand behind the podium. "Before we start, I want to make something clear. I will be strict, heroics is not easy and I refuse to let someone who is not capable risk their life. That does not mean you can't come to me if you need something. I am your homeroom teacher, and for this to work, you have to trust me," he informs, voice serious, and for a moment his exhaustion seems to lift as he looks at each student seriously.
That's not what Izuku is used to. At most his previous homeroom teachers have just introduced themselves before stopping caring about the class, unless they absolutely had to. Still, that does not mean Aizawa's words include him. While the hero is a very good one, often patrolling in areas other heroes avoid, helping those neglected by society, Izuku has first hand experience on how even the best people might be secretly horrible. In middle school, Izuku was once beaten up by an older student, who had a scholarship to his dream high school because of good behavior.
"Now, take your gym uniforms," Aizawa nods at the pile of uniforms on his desk, "and meet me outside in ten minutes," he orders, before leaving the room.
The hero has obviously startled Izuku's classmates, as everyone scrambles to get their uniforms. Izuku chooses to stand back and wait for the crowd to disperse, watching Bakugou shove everyone aside to get his uniform. It's clear he is still furious, but Eraserhead is scary enough for him to behave for now.
When most have left towards the changing rooms, Izuku stands up and grabs his uniform. This one has been changed for his preferences too, as Izuku sees it's a size bigger with long sleeves, and has no tags. Turns out UA is actually pretty considerate, who knew.
"Hey, dude, you okay?" someone suddenly asks when Izuku leaves the classroom. Turning his eyes towards the voice, he sees Kirishima standing near the door.
"Yeah?" Izuku replies unsurely, continuing walking, ignoring how his heart squeezes when Kirishima starts walking next to him. Vaguely Izuku notices Todoroki walk past them, leaving only Kirishima and Izuku in the hallway, as everyone else has already left.
"Okay, that's good. That explosion guy is kinda scary," Kirishima says, and his tone seems friendly. Izuku wonders what the boy's motive is.
"I guess," he says with a shrug. Clearly Kirishima is discouraged by Izuku's quietness, and they walk the rest of the way to the changing rooms in silence.
Izuku watches as Mineta half walks, half runs off, while his classmates express their shock at the boy being expelled. Aizawa did say he has one more chance before being expelled, and he has been nothing but offensive throughout the quirk assessment test from hell. It certainly didn't help that he got last place, not taking the test seriously.
"Your schedules and other information are in the classroom, you're dismissed," Aizawa informs, before walking off.
Wanting to leave as soon as possible, Izuku heads back to the changing rooms. When he gets there, he grabs his school uniform from where he hid it on top of the lockers, before slipping into a stall to change.
His whole body hurts, because he had to push it so hard during the test to compete against those with quirks. Thankfully his endless training in the past few months hasn't gone to waste, and he placed pretty much in the middle of the class. There seems to be a common theme of people only relying on their quirks and neglecting training their body, so a lot of people who couldn't use their quirk during the test placed low.
After changing, Izuku leaves the stall and the changing room, slipping past his classmates that are just now entering. They all have lockers in the room, but Izuku figures it's better to carry his uniform with him.
Entering the classroom, Izuku walks to his seat, noticing the stack of papers on each of the desks. After shoving his uniform in his bag, Izuku starts looking through the papers, the schedule at the top. Presumably because of how demanding UA will be, they have a two day weekend, unlike many other high schools. The first period is homeroom with Aizawa, and after that are the compulsory subjects, like math and languages. Interestingly, there's also law and ethics, taught by Aizawa. After lunch, the rest of the day is for heroics.
On another paper is some information about lunch. Apparently the school offers food for many different diets, but students can email the school if they have some very specific needs. Then there is a paper with some contact information, including Aizawa's. There's also Recovery Girl as she's the school nurse, and Hound Dog, because he's the school counselor.
Shouldering his bag, Izuku leaves the classroom, briefly going through the rest of the papers in his hand. It seems like UA is very thorough, because there's everything Izuku might ever need. Even the support course's schedule is there, in case he needs to talk about support items or uniform adjustments.
Exiting the school building, Izuku folds the papers in half, while digging his student ID from his pocket. The front gates open when he presses the card on a sensor, and Izuku heads out towards the train station.
Often UA students get a lot of attention even before they become popular in the media, even other courses than just the hero course. Being a student there is just that impressive. Because of that, Izuku soon stops walking for long enough that he can take his blazer off and put it in his backpack, the papers and his student ID following.
The rest of the way home goes in relative peace. Thankfully everyone is usually in such a hurry, or so focused on their own things, that Izuku's shoes don't cause him unwanted attention too often, especially because the bright red is so faded and dirty. Still, sometimes someone notices, and that has left Izuku in many very unfortunate situations.
For a long time Izuku avoided public places because of that, and absolutely refused to enter places where he can't easily get away from, like trains. Now he has no choice, UA is so far away from his home. The mindset of "what's the worst that could happen?" has proven itself very useful.
Unfortunately there is still one place, or more like one person, where Izuku can't apply that: his mom, Inko.
Izuku loves her, he really does, but he also knows she'd break if she knew even a fraction of anything going on. Already he is able to imagine the tears if she found out about the lies.
Because of that, when Izuku approaches their apartment building, at first he goes to the side of it, quickly starting to climb up the fire escape. When he reaches the top floor, Izuku pushes on the window he left cracked open in the morning. Swiftly he enters his room, and changes out of his uniform, and into some jeans and a hoodie. Making sure to be silent, Izuku shoves the rest of his uniform in his bag, takes his keys out, and climbs out of the window again.
Carefully Izuku sets the backpack on the metal platform of the fire escape, pressing it against the wall so that hopefully the window sill will offer protection from weather. Then, with quiet steps, Izuku walks down the fire escape. He is, and has always been, endlessly grateful that his room has the fire escape access. Before it has offered him a place to hide medical supplies and burned clothes, now it's useful for this.
It doesn't take Izuku long to reach the front door, and he takes one deep breath, and then opens it. Because Inko is a nurse, she has a very sporadic schedule, so Izuku can never know when she's home and when she isn't. Today, it seems like she has a free day, as she was home in the morning, and now her shoes are laying by the entrance.
"Hi, baby," Inko greets with a smile, walking from behind a corner while Izuku kicks off his shoes. "How was your shift?" she asks.
"Good," Izuku replies, giving her a brief hug. "Kind of busy, but I found out that actually I have both Saturday and Sunday free," he explains. Sometimes he wonders when lying became so easy. He's so used to it that it doesn't really even feel like lying, and there's no guilt even as he meets his mom's eyes and creates lies about his "workday."
Even before Izuku's diagnosis, Inko had been protective. Izuku only has very brief memories of his father, Hisashi, and all of them are tainted with fear. Inko never told him the details, but Izuku knows Hisashi wasn't a good father, nor a good husband. He is aware that something happened when he was three, something that removed Hisashi from their lives, and made Inko endlessly anxious regarding Izuku's health and wellbeing.
After his diagnosis, it just got more intense. At first it was nice, Izuku had all the attention and care he could dream of. Then he started getting hurt at school.
Inko always cried so much, and begged Izuku to not play so rough with the other kids. That's when Izuku learned to hide things. As he grew, the worry turned restricting, and he started to lie. In the beginning he wasn't that good at it, but the endless guilt he felt when Inko got so anxious about every setback quickly taught him to be better.
"I'm so glad you could find this job," Inko says as she and Izuku sit by the dining table, eating the katsudon she made while he was away. "You just couldn't stay out of trouble in school," she adds playfully, and Izuku makes himself respond to her smile.
"Yeah," he agrees. If she ever finds out, it's going to be a shitshow.