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He made a statement just by existing.
He made a statement by telling Aizawa, on their first day of school, that if he was going to expel Izuku for refusing to his quirk, then he should expel him for not having one at all. A few people whispered, but their teacher only smirked. He didn’t finish dead last. Izuku wasn’t expelled. Nobody was.
He made a statement at the USJ.
Fighting even though he didn’t really have anything to offer but his brains, but it still got them out of their danger. He could have done nothing to save Tsuyu, but their teacher had, and so Izuku was grateful for that. He just had to work harder.
Harder than anyone.
He made a statement at the Sports Festival. He finished first in the race. Quirkless. His team came third, overall, thanks to Uraraka and Mei and Tokoyami, who did not count him out for his quirk.
He made a statement when refusing to yield to Shinsou’s quirk. He made a statement when telling Todoroki to stop insulting him by refusing to use his fire. He got burned for his insolence, and lost the festival, but Izuku got further than dozens of people with quirks.
Nobody can take that from him.
He makes a statement when, in a quiet, subdued meeting with Principal Nezu and All Might, Izuku’s favourite hero, he’s offered a quirk. He makes a statement when, despite having everything he’s ever wished for ready to be handed over to him on a neat little plate…
“Thank you,” Izuku murmurs, smile warbling as he rises to his feet to bow at All Might, and then to the principal. “But I’m going to be a quirkless hero. I got here without one. I’m going to get all the way there without one, too. But… thank you for believing that I’m worthy.”
And All Might – his teacher gives him a complicated smile in return, something like tears building in his eyes as he claps Izuku on the shoulder and nods.
“You’ll be an excellent hero, young Midoriya,” he promises, and Izuku tries so hard not to cry. “I have every faith in you.”
Izuku sobs his heart out on the train ride home. His younger self would be disappointed in him, Izuku thinks. The chance to have a quirk, and All Might’s, no less? He must be crazy for doing it, but… but Izuku doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want a quirk. He’s gone his whole life without one. He’s gotten this far without one. How much further can he go?
All the way. Plus Ultra, right? Izuku got to Yuuei. The number one hero school in the country without a quirk. He doesn’t let himself dwell on what he’d be capable with one. He doesn’t let himself wonder, because Izuku is what he is, and he wouldn’t trade that for anything.
He reads the articles, over the following days, talking about him. About how irresponsible Yuuei is for allowing a quirkless student into their heroics course. But there are some golden threads talking about the representation he’s giving, about how hard he’s working, about how he’s proving himself to be the equal of the students with quirks, and making it look effortless. (and he did win the race. Iida has a speed quirk. Kacchan could have stolen the spotlight easily from Izuku. Anybody could have won. And they didn’t. Izuku won.)
He doesn’t get any offers for internships.
He tries not to let it get to him. He finished top eight. He won the first round. Secured the second. Fought Todoroki. And nobody thought he was worthy of giving an offer. Izuku knows it’s because he doesn’t have a quirk, and not in a bad way, really. They just don’t know how to help him train if he doesn’t have a quirk to do it. He can’t blame them for that.
At the end of the day, Aizawa slips him an envelope and eyes him critically, saying only, “Think about it.” Before letting him leave.
At home, he realises it’s an offer letter.
From Aizawa.
He doesn’t hide his tears as he breaks down at his desk. He thought, at first, that Aizawa just didn’t like him, that he thought he was a waste of a space in the hero course for not having a quirk, and yet he’s given Izuku an internship offer. Is it because he feels sorry for Izuku? Or is it because he thinks he might have something to teach him?
Izuku accepts the offer.
Aizawa doesn’t go easy on him in the slightest. Izuku is grateful for it.
He might not come out the other side as flourishing as some of his classmates might, but Aizawa drills some very, very specific words of advice into his head.
Let them underestimate you. Be underestimated.
He prods Izuku carefully to the underground hero path, and truth be told, Izuku would likely have gone that direction anyway. An above-ground quirkless hero just… wouldn’t survive. Izuku still might not, and that’s a fact of his own existence he’s come to accept, but Izuku wants to be a hero more than anything.
He’s going to get there.
He will.
His exams are the hardest part to pass. Pairing him up with Kacchan had almost been both of their undoing, especially against All Might, but it took some ingenuity, as well as some righteous anger and violence on Izuku’s side, and Kacchan was making himself a nice little distraction for Izuku to run for it.
Nobody points out the obvious. That in a fight against an S-Rank villain, Izuku would have no choice but to run.
They’re all thinking it.
It doesn’t matter that most of them would have to run, too, though. Izuku is quirkless. He would have to run.
They still like him, though, his classmates. They don’t dislike him because he’s quirkless, they might think he’s crazy, but… they respect him. They like him, he thinks. They invite him to Kiyashi Ward with them, and he’s all too happy to join them in preparation for the summer camp.
It’s only bad luck that leaves him momentarily alone, long enough for Shigaraki Tomura to take full advantage.
“Midoriya Izuku,” he says, as though testing the name on his tongue. “You.”
“Shigaraki Tomura,” Izuku whispers back. He’s utterly at a loss. He can’t do anything, or else Shigaraki’s finger will close around his throat, and he will be ash and dust.
“The quirkless hero. I can’t say I’ve heard that before.”
He runs through his options. If Shigaraki lets go of his neck at any point, legally, Izuku can defend himself. Nobody ever thinks about that – he’s quirkless, so quirkless laws apply to him regardless of being on the hero course. He can defend himself, in public, aggressively, and they won’t be able to arrest him, especially not if Shigaraki is a villain. Public quirk use just won’t ever be a problem for Izuku.
The other issue, though, is that Shigaraki probably isn’t going to let go of his neck.
Izuku has nothing.
He just has to sit through and listen to the villain whine about his plans falling apart. His failed attack on Hosu, overtaken in the media by Endeavour arresting Stain. His poor excuse for an attack on the USJ.
All of it, he just brings it around to Izuku being quirkless.
He doesn’t understand.
“Twenty percent of the population is quirkless,” Izuku says hoarsely, glaring daggers at the villain. “Why is it such a surprise that one of us could make so much trouble for you?”
Shigaraki’s lip curls. “One of you… wouldn’t you take a quirk if you could, Midoriya?”
“No,” he answers honestly. Shigaraki doesn’t need to know that this isn’t a thought experiment. Izuku has lived this reality. “No, I wouldn’t. I am who I am because I am quirkless. And that makes you afraid of me, doesn’t it?”
Shigaraki’s fingers tighten on Izuku’s neck. “I could crush you like a bug before I even decayed an inch of skin.”
“But you haven’t,” Izuku whispers back. “You’re afraid of losing. You’re afraid of losing to someone who isn’t worthy of losing to.” His lips curl up into a bitter smile. “You’re not the first to think it. You won’t be the last. But maybe, maybe you’ll be the reason people don’t underestimate me.”
“You insolent little—”
“Deku..?”
Izuku stops breathing.
The sixty seconds it takes for Shigaraki to let go of his neck, for Uraraka to mistakenly block his path to the villain again, are a blur. He tries not to get upset with her, she just wanted to help, but if she hadn’t he could have stopped Shigaraki. He could have claimed self-defence.
He doesn’t.
His classmates crowd around him, later, most afraid, most relieved.
“God,” Kaminari says as Izuku puts his head in his hands, grinding his teeth together. “That must have been so scary, Mido, if you’d had a quirk, you could have—”
He bares his teeth and snaps. “Been arrested for illegal public quirk use and let Shigaraki walk free?”
They all fall silent.
Kaminari doesn’t meet his gaze, blinking at the ground. “Sorry, I – I didn’t mean…”
Izuku grinds his teeth together. “Nobody ever does.”
They tell him he did the right thing. Pitying looks. Quiet whispers. Nobody looks at him right.
Nobody looks at him when the location of the summer camp is moved. Izuku tries not to worry about it. He tries to think about what he’ll be training, how he’ll be training, because he doesn’t have a quirk to fight with, and he needs to work hard to master his own skills if he wants any chance of coming out a hero.
And he will.
He will be a hero. They’re counting on him.
On the third night at the summer camp, Izuku is kidnapped by the League of Villains.
They take great joy in making him watch the news.
They’re using it as proof of why Izuku should never have been admitted to Yuuei at all. unable to protect himself against Shigaraki a week prior, and then kidnapped by the League with no chance at defending himself, even when Eraserhead authorised quirk use in self-defence.
Izuku could do nothing.
He could do nothing when a man taller than even All Might, with no eyes and a wicked smile pressed his hand to Izuku’s cheek and whispered,
“I’m correcting the wrong that’s been done to you.”
He doesn’t look in the mirror for two weeks straight after being rescued.
The doctors run tests. Izuku does not open his mouth unless Aizawa is using his quirk.
They ask him if he’s afraid of his quirk. Izuku replies that he’s quirkless.
They tell him that he’s not.
Izuku tells them that he is.
He has the toe joint. He has the appendix. He has the wisdom teeth.
Izuku is quirkless.
All for One, so All Might tells him, cannot change that.
The first time Izuku does look in the mirror, he pulls his fist back and smashes it. It makes him bleed, and Recovery Girl chides him for hurting himself, for needing stitches, but she doesn’t understand that the boy in the mirror isn’t Izuku. The boy in the mirror has a quirk, and Izuku is quirkless.
Things change, after that. Izuku hates it.
Todoroki sits beside him inside the Yuuei dorms, and he’s the first to try to get Izuku to talk about it.
“Have you used it, much?” he asks. He doesn’t have a lot of tact. Izuku doesn’t look at him, and just shakes his head. He can’t trust the flames not to leap out of his mouth with a breath taken wrong. “You should try. I could help you, if you wanted. You owe it to yourself to use it.”
“I don’t owe anyone anything.”
He’s adjusted to the sound of silence when he walks into a room. It still encompasses him whole, though. Izuku is the first to break it again, though, baring his teeth in anger.
“You think I should be grateful, don’t you?” Each syllable grates on his vocal cords. Burnt vocal cords. His voice is deeper, rougher than it used to be. Hoarse.
Todoroki’s eyes are on the counter. “No,” and it’s cautious. Careful. “A villain hurt you. That’s not something someone should be forced to be grateful for.”
“Then why,” he drops his voice to a whisper. “Are you trying to tell me that I owe it to myself?”
His classmate’s lips press into a thing line, eyes narrowing at nothing.
“You taught me that I didn’t have any right to underestimate you, before. You demanded I use my full power. That’s what it took to defeat you when you didn’t have any power of your own. But you have power, now. To refuse to use it would be akin to what I did to spite my father.”
“I don’t have power,” Izuku spits. His saliva sprays onto the counter, sizzling like on hot coals from the heat of the flames that aren’t his. “I am quirkless.”
Todoroki meets his eyes, then, one blue, one gray, and there’s something… sad about it.
“No you aren’t. Not anymore.”
Izuku curls his upper lip, snaps to his feet, and walks away.
He doesn’t come out of his room except to eat, shower, and train.
He doesn’t use the quirk.
Iida is the second, and final classmate to try to talk him into a truth that isn’t his.
“I understand,” he implores Izuku on the sofa in the dorm room. Izuku almost gets up and walks away, but he doesn’t, if just to see what Iida has to say about it. “You’ve lived your whole life as one thing, and now you’ve had something else thrust upon you without your consent. It would be enough to discourage anybody.”
“I’m not discouraged.” Every word Izuku says, these days, is flat. “I’m going to be a hero. And I am going to do it quirkless.”
Iida hesitates, shaking his head. “Don’t you think that’s irresponsible? After what you told Todoroki during the festival—”
“I’m tired of this,” he snaps. His fingers flex. “I’m tired of everybody thinking that you know better than me, now. You all think you get it, you think I should be happy, but I’m not. I was never going to be. It was never about getting a quirk, it was about being a hero. The boy in the mirror just isn’t me, and I won’t ever use this quirk because it just isn’t mine.”
Iida looks grieved, at that, turning away. “I do understand,” he says, quieter this time. “Though you think I don’t. There – there was a time when… when I almost made a mistake. A grievous mistake that – well. I was angry. You are too, Midoriya, for what’s been done to you, and it isn’t fair at all. But to lock yourself away, make a recluse of yourself, it isn’t the solution. You were always going to be a hero. You got into Yuuei without a quirk, but the fact is that you will be leaving Yuuei with one.”
Izuku…
Izuku turns vicious.
“You’re not listening to me,” he hisses lowly, meeting Iida’s gaze head on. “Why don’t I make it clear?”
“Midoriya—”
“Stain paralysed your brother.”
The earth beneath them stops. Every head in the room turns towards them. Iida turns a ghostly pale shade.
“Stain paralysed your brother,” Izuku repeats, harder this time. “He took away everything your brother stood for. He took away everything that made your brother the hero he was. He can’t use his quirk anymore. Stain took away the fundamental part of who your brother was, and what kind of hero he was. If you can’t see that that,” he spits, and Iida flinches. It burns a hole into the couch. “Is the same thing that’s been done to me, then you don’t deserve to be here.”
Izuku rises to his feet and leaves, meeting the eyes of every last classmate in his path as he goes.
He does not come out for breakfast.
Izuku does not use his quirk during the provisional licence exam. He does not work in the group the majority of his class forms. He does not follow Kacchan. Izuku goes off on his own.
He is underestimated, and simultaneously given a wide berth.
Only one girl ever dares to get close to him, breathing into his ear, whispering in a way that’s almost, almost familiar.
“Miss me, Izuku?” she breathes, and then she’s gone.
When Izuku slides his provisional license into his pocket two hours later, he feels a slip of card that wasn’t in there earlier. He doesn’t take it out until he’s back at Yuuei.
If you miss me…
Come find me.
A string of numbers on the back.
Izuku doesn’t tell a soul when he emerges, albeit reluctantly, to join his classmates in their celebrations.
He won’t stay long, he resolves himself. Just long enough to congratulate those who passed. He doesn’t intend to talk to Todoroki or Kacchan, but the latter snags him anyway, just as Izuku is considering making his escape. Nobody has looked Izuku in the eye for the last twenty minutes, so his welcome is almost overstayed.
“Let’s go outside,” he says, eyes on the wall beside Izuku’s head.
“No,” Izuku says boldly. Kacchan startles, a little, at his tone, but he huffs and looks back out to the common room, where the others are celebrating their success. Once upon a time, Izuku would have been thrilled to join them.
“Fine,” Kacchan says, and then, inexplicably, meets his gaze. “I’m sorry.”
The world falls out from underneath Izuku, but he doesn’t let it show. “For what?” he asks, to be utterly, entirely certain.
A muscle in Kacchan’s eye twitches.
“For how I treated you,” he says, low, teeth grinding together. “When we were kids.”
Izuku slaps him.
It’s a simple motion. Entirely uncoordinated. It doesn’t have his body weight behind it, but Kacchan still moves with the motion, blinking back it him in shock; it barely hurts, a smart, more than anything, but his cheek still turns pink from the impact, the sound almost deafening.
“What the fuck—”
“So you think I’m worth an apology now?” he whispers. “Now that I have a quirk? Now that I have a licence and you don’t?”
“For god’s sake, Deku,” Kacchan hisses, lowering his voice. He doesn’t yell. That’s not like him. “Don’t make this into something it isn’t, alright?”
“No,” and it’s hysterical, it really, really is. “No, that is what this is about, Kacchan! If you – you think that just – just some apology from you is going to make me realise, wow, maybe having a quirk isn’t that bad after all, then – then grow up! The world doesn’t revolve around you, and – and—”
He moves to slap Kacchan again, or maybe it’s a punch, because his hand balls up into a fist, and Kacchan catches his wrist with ease, snarling his response.
“You deserve an apology,” he grinds out. “So fucking maybe just accept it, you asshole, alright?”
“No!” it’s shrill, enough to garner the attention of their classmates, and Kacchan shifts under the watchful gazes of their classmates. “No, you – you’re just fucking furious that I got there first—”
“Deku—”
“—that someone weak and quirkless managed to get a licence when you couldn’t—”
“You’re not quirkless—”
“Yes I am!” he roars. Izuku’s hands climb into his own hair, then, tugging hard. “Yes. I. Am.”
“You’re not anymore!”
“And that’s why you’re apologising, that’s why you’re doing this—”
“For god’s sake, just – just calm down—”
“I am not worth more, now!” Izuku roars, and the whole dorm silences their mutterings and whispers. Every last pair of eyes turn to look at him as his chest heaves with a silent rage. “I am not worth more because I have a quirk now. I – I was never worth less. I was – I was never weak. I was never worthless. You can’t act like – like I’m not fucking fragile anymore, because – because I was always capable of – of this!”
He leaves, like he always does, and the card on his desk almost seems to burn a hole into it, and in Izuku’s chest.
He doesn’t do anything about the note for a long time.
He eats his lunches alone, when class starts up again, even though the others try to talk to him, sometimes. They don’t like him, whether there’s an anymore at the end of it doesn’t matter. Izuku is used to it. He won’t pretend to be something he isn’t.
Aizawa takes him as his intern anyway, even though he’s not really supposed to. He does it because he knows Izuku won’t get any other offers, or maybe he wants to coax Izuku into using the quirk, but he never mentions it, and he doesn’t ask when Izuku hides behind his mask more than he ever used to do before.
His first raid could have gone better. A lot, lot better. He wishes he could have done more to reassure his classmates, Kirishima, Uraraka, Tsuyu, all of them coming away injured, and Izuku did almost nothing in comparison.
The third year, Togata, had been rendered quirkless by a quirk erasing bullet. Several eyes land on Izuku, and all he can think is, I wish it had been me.
“I’m going to be taking some time off Yuuei,” Togata says. He’s still smiling. “Since I lost my quirk and all, I just figure my time is better spent helping take care of Eri.”
Something inside Izuku snaps. It’s not the first time. It might be the last. He reigns in the visible anger anyway.
“You can be a hero without a quirk,” he says flatly. Uraraka and Kirishima tense. They’re the closest. He wonders if they think he’s going to lose it on Togata.
“Oh, for sure,” Togata agrees. “It’s just not for me. It’s not the kind of hero I am.”
Izuku only nods. It’s the most respectable, agreeable answer he could have given.
Izuku still hates that it was ever a question at all.
He lies awake at night for weeks to come, wondering what he is, why nobody will ever take him seriously ever again, why he had to be given a quirk at all, why he can’t just give it back—
On the fifteenth of November, at two-thirty in the morning, Izuku sits bolt upright.
The string of numbers on the back of the card.
He types them shakily into his phone, lighting up the room, kneeling on the ground beside his desk with half the contents strewn around the room in his attempt to find where he’d misplaced it, half-torn and ruined notebooks thrown away where Izuku can’t bear to look at them anymore.
Hello he types.
He sends.
He licks his lips and waits.
It takes twelve seconds for the text to read as seen.
I knew youd miss me eventually.
He swallows.
Toga.
Three blowing kiss emojis in return.
Come say hi.
A location.
Izuku turns his phone off, and breathes.
It’s easier than Izuku expected to convince Aizawa to let him go home for the weekend. Some combination of pity and distaste, more than likely, as well as the lie about some grandparent’s birthday dinner that he’d like to go to. It was easy.
Getting to the location is easy. He knocks on the door. He’s ready to fight. He’d rather die at the League’s hand than survive a monster of their making.
“Boss,” Dabi says, when he opens the door. Izuku can’t tell if he’s smirking. “It’s the quirkless one.”
The quirkless one.
Izuku hasn’t been called that in months. Izuku wants to be the quirkless one again.
Shigaraki turns to him slowly, smile breaking across his face.
“Midoriya,” he greets, rising to his feet as though he’s talking to a friend. “Long time no see.”
“Take it back,” Izuku says. It’s flat. Commanding. He trembles with the urge not to throw a punch.
Shigaraki pauses. His brows knit together. There’s—
Izuku wants to be sick.
There’s sympathy in his gaze.
“I can’t,” Shigaraki whispers. “Sensei was the only one who could. He’s in Tartarus.”
A single tear drips down Izuku's cheek. "I want it gone."
And Shigaraki looks away. His eyes flutter closed, and his smile dissipates.
"Come inside," he says gently. "I think we have a lot to discuss."
It doesn’t take long. It only takes a few words, actually. Promises that All for One would take the quirk back once he escaped. Promises that they wouldn’t ever treat him differently for it. Promises. Promises. Promises.
“You’re asking me to betray my friends,” Izuku croaks. There are tears dripping down cheeks that aren’t his. Shigaraki just tilts his head.
“Are they?”
He doesn’t startle. He just flinches.
“Are they your friends?” Shigaraki asks. He still sounds so soft. He hadn’t known the villain could be soft. “Would friends treat you the way they have?”
“Stop,” he whispers. The villain doesn’t.
“Would friends only think better of you because you have a quirk?”
“They – they—”
“Would friends force you to use something that hurts you so much to use?”
“I can’t,” Izuku begs. “I’m not, I’m – I’m a hero.”
“And you should be one,” the villain sets his fingers beneath his chin, a far-cry from the touch from months ago that threatened to ruin him. “But you should be a quirkless hero. Don’t you see that what you want and what I want are the same? A world where your quirk, or lack, shouldn’t matter. A world where quirk doesn’t mean better. You see that, don’t you?”
And—
And Izuku does.
He sees it.
He craves it.
He needs it like the heart needs to pump on, he needs it like lungs need air, he needs it like a dead man needs to know that he will be remembered.
Izuku Midoriya has always been a boy of strong will. Today, that will bent.
It takes him a few days to adjust to his new reality as a traitor. Shigaraki doesn’t press him. Izuku wonders why he’s even taken Izuku at all. He could be a rat. He could take the League down from the inside. It would be so, so easy to go to Aizawa, to tell him that the League approached him while he was out, and that he could infiltrate. They might even let him. Or, he could give the police their location, and it would simply be over.
Izuku does neither.
What he does do, four days after accepting Shigaraki’s extended hand, is take a tentative seat on Todoroki’s left side.
“If you were willing,” he says quietly enough to be drowned out by the background noise of the room. “If your offer still stands, I’d… I’d like to take you up on it.”
He hates the look that the others that hear it give him. Sympathy, and a little bit of relief. Relief that, maybe, Izuku has finally opened up to the possibility of having a quirk. That maybe they can put Izuku’s past as a quirkless hero behind them all. That they can do what’s easiest for them.
“Alright,” Todoroki says after a long moment of consideration. “What changed your mind?”
Izuku’s hand flexes. He’s a liar, now. He’s never been a very good one.
“My grandfather,” he lies. “I saw him over this weekend. He… has a quirk a little bit like this one. I just… I want to make him proud. My father couldn’t.”
It’s believable. Believable to everyone, except maybe Kacchan, but he stopped listening to Izuku talk about his family a long, long time ago. He won’t know, or care, that all of Izuku’s grandparents are long dead. He won’t care that Izuku is a liar. If he calls Izuku out on it, he’d just assume that it’s some cover for the truth, something less embarrassing, something for Izuku to tell the others and have them believe.
Todoroki takes his lie with all the grace he’s been raised with and offers him a tentative smile.
“Alright, then,” he says, and nods. “Let’s start tomorrow.”
Izuku hates every minute he spends using his quirk. He thinks it might be obvious, but Todoroki is uncharacteristically kind about it. Or perhaps it is characteristic of Todoroki to be kind, and he’s just turned so deeply into his own hatred that he forgot to seek out the good in everybody else.
“It’s not going to be easy,” Todoroki tells him over and over. “You’re new to this. Even though I haven’t been using my fire as much until recently, I still have years more experience than you. But you can do it. You have the determination to. If you got into Yuuei quirkless, there’s nothing you can’t do.”
That sentiment plays on repeat in Izuku’s mind each night. You got in quirkless. There’s nothing you can’t do.
You got in quirkless.
There’s nothing you can’t do.
He pushes it down.
They only respect him because he has a quirk.
They only like him because he has a quirk.
Izuku has broken bridges to mend with paper, and Iida’s is the hardest, and easiest, to do.
“I just need to tell you,” he says quietly at Iida’s door. It’s four minutes to curfew. He knows the boy well enough to know that he’ll shut the door promptly on the hour. “That I’m sorry for what I said. I was angry.”
Iida takes a long time to contemplate his answer. “You meant it, Midoriya.”
Izuku swallows but doesn’t reply other than to nod.
“You… you are right, though,” the other boy continues, much, much quieter. “I could never understand what’s been done to you. I suppose that third year might understand you better. The one who lost his quirk. But in a way, there is just no equivalent. So… so it’s I that owes you an apology.”
“That’s not—”
“The villains tortured you,” Iida says firmly, as though Izuku doesn’t have the memory of Shigaraki’s kind smile etched into his mind now, replacing the violent rage from before. “And you’re right. I think – I think what happened to my brother might be the closest approximation to the violation of your sense of self that possibly exists.”
He bows, sharp and formal, and Izuku doesn’t bother to suppress his tears. He’s enough of a crybaby that they’ve come to accept it of him.
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you never used the quirk forced upon you,” Iida continues, rising back to his full height and pushing his glasses back up his face. “But I must say, you’re a braver man than I am for continuing on. It almost made you bitter. I’m pleased to see that you haven’t let it overrule you like a villain might have.”
Iida’s phone dings, and before Izuku can whimper out a guilty sob, he offers Izuku a weak, tentative smile.
“I’ll see you tomorrow in class, Midoriya.” And his door clicks softly shut, leaving Izuku alone to patter back to his room, sobbing because he knows, he knows that everything they think he would have been is wrong.
Because Izuku is a traitor.
Because Izuku has let his anger rule him. Izuku is nothing but rage. Izuku is nothing but a bright hot ball of burning fury at the world, at whatever God might exist for making him this way, and for putting him in the position where betraying these people, who only want to do good, is the best possible solution.
They will still do good, Izuku tries to reason with himself, sobbing into his soaked pillowcase. Just in a world where it will matter.
He’s expecting Aizawa to say something. He just… never really knew what.
“Kid,” he begins, after asking Izuku to stay behind after school as the rest of his classmates disappear to the dorms. “You know… you know having a quirk now doesn’t make you worth more, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitation, and then bites his tongue. It’s everybody else that needs to learn that.
“You know you’re under no obligation to use the quirk that’s been forced onto you,” he says, as though broaching a particularly unpleasant subject.
It’s not true, and it is, at once.
“I know,” Izuku offers, though it’s a lie. “But… it’s like I told Todoroki. It doesn’t matter where it came from. This quirk… it’s mine, now.”
“There’s a difference. Todoroki’s issues with his own quirk stemmed from the relationship he has with his parents. Yours… yours is because this isn’t your own quirk. It’s something that’s been forced onto you to exert control. You are quirkless. I know that’s… that’s something people are trying to convince you otherwise. It’s your identity. It’s who you are. everything about you, your determination, your drive to help protect people, it comes from your quirklessness. If you want to learn to control the quirk that’s been given to you, I support that wholeheartedly. But only if that’s what you really, genuinely want.”
Three days, Izuku has spent betraying his classmates. Betraying the heroes.
That’s all it took to hear everything he ever wanted to hear them say before. He wonders if they meant it, before. He wonders if they wanted him before. He wonders if there is ever a world out there where his classmates wholeheartedly called him their friend without even an ounce of hesitation. He wonders. Wonders. Wonders.
“Thank you, sensei,” Izuku whispers, because he can’t bring himself to speak any louder. “It is what I want.”
He leaves before Aizawa can call him out on the lie and turns himself into his room so he can cry with nobody knowing about that, either.
The last thing, the last stone Izuku oversteps, though, the last thing he has to overcome, is the words spoken to him by his idol, by his hero, by the man who was almost killed trying to stop the man who did this to Izuku.
“I just wanted to tell you,” the man says over tea, rake thin but smiling at him. “That… that what was done to you is unforgivable. If there were any way I could march into Tartarus and demand he take it back from you, I truly, truly would.”
All Might is quirkless.
Izuku holds back tears, this time. Because this, this is going to be it. This might make him break. This might ruin him.
“I think it’s incredibly brave of you,” his once hero tells him. Izuku’s hands shake where he holds his tea. “To go on like this. I know you were… you were very angry, before. You had every right to be. You still do. I’m sorry that I… that I failed you, by not protecting you sooner. By not coming for you sooner.”
“It’s not your fault,” Izuku whispers. His eyes are on the swirling pool of black. “You did everything you could.”
“I think it’s something for you to keep in mind,” All Might insists, and when he looks up, the hero is so earnest that a tear slips unbidden down his cheeks. “They targeted you specifically.”
He looks away.
“Because I’m quirkless,” Izuku says flatly. Am. Not was.
“Yes,” All Might agrees. “But… but not for the reasons everybody else tells you, I think. You were taken to make a statement, yes, but… but of all the methods they chose to harm you, they chose to force a quirk onto you.”
Izuku stares at him, then, the tears slowly drip, drip, dripping down his cheeks, landing in his forgotten tea.
“I think there was something about your existence, young Midoriya, that threatened All for One. He is a selfish man, and there are few reasons he would give a quirk to someone if not to even the scales. You were – you are an incredible hero, my dear boy. I think, given the chance, you would have been an incredible quirkless hero. I’m sorry that chance was ripped from you.”
Izuku spills the tea on the ground in his haste to leave, and he doesn’t look back when All Might calls after him.
It takes him a long, long, long time to build his courage again.
His lies become shorter. Sweeter. Easier to swallow. His lies become beautiful. His lies become so hard to separate from himself that he forgets what he is until he’s crawling into bed at night, the sinking feeling in his gut threatening to drown him, as he tap, tap, taps away a message that won’t be cracked except by those it should be.
People know him. People believe in him. In what he could have been. Not so much what he is, anymore. It’s okay. Izuku just has to have faith in Shigaraki Tomura. He has to believe that if (when?) they get All for One out of prison, he will free Izuku of the monstrous prison he sentenced Izuku to.
He will be free. He will be what he’s supposed to be. He will be.
He’s not making a mistake.
He’s not.
He isn’t.
Shouta’s had worries about Midoriya for months. His sudden switch from moody, depressed, reclusive, into mildly outgoing, cautiously optimistic, somewhat hopeful, made Shouta concerned the kid was routing down a path of self-destruction that Shouta wasn’t sure he could help with. The warning signs for suicide were all there, after all, but he keeps a dangerously close eye on the kid, and he just seems…
He seems to come into himself.
It makes it even more surprising when, shortly after the new year, his student trembles, tears dripping down his cheeks and gasping for breath as he takes a seat opposite Shouta’s desk, fingers gouging into the table.
“S-Sensei,” his student says, stuttering, gasping for air. “Sensei, I – I’ve – I’ve made a m-mistake.”
At once, Shouta’s on edge. “Tell me what happened.”
Midoriya struggles for words, avoiding Shouta’s eyes, darting around and slightly glazed over as he must be running through all manner of possibilities.
“I w-was – was a-approached b-by – by the League,” and Shouta’s stomach falls out from underneath him, even as he leaps up to his feet to kneel down at the kid’s side.
“Are you injured?” he demands, even though he’d have been able to tell that before, and he has no idea when, and why Midoriya’s so rattled. “Midoriya, tell me what happened.”
“I didn’t want to fight,” Midoriya begs him. “I didn’t want to fight them, there were so many of them, I just – I went with them. They – they wanted me. To – to join them, Sensei, I – so I just – I played along unt-until they let me go and I came straight here—”
“Good,” Shouta tells him fiercely, fingers digging into his shoulders. “You did good, kid, good by telling me. We can fix this. You did good keeping your calm okay.”
His student only continues to sob, and Shouta has to pass him a box of tissues to wipe up the mess he’s making beneath his nose, because he’s far, far more rattled than Shouta’s ever seen the poor kid.
“I’m sorry,” he begs. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he insists, and brings the kid in for an uncharacteristic hug. Damn himself, he’s gotten fond of Midoriya, not least because of what the kid’s had the guts to survive, to push through. “You might just have helped bring down the League, kid, okay?”
He nods, but he’s still hyperventilating, and Shouta knows when he’s beat, knows when to call in for reinforcements, because this kid’s been through enough.
He’s put through the wringer in interrogation, shakily parsing out details of the League’s hideout and their numbers and a gauge on their quirks, and Midoriya is sharp as a knife to pick that up at the drop of a hat when still being afraid the villains would kill him. Even with his provisional licence, he hadn’t felt able to fight back when clearly overwhelmed by sheer number alone, let alone a quirk he’s only just beginning to get to grips with. Midoriya was right to disengage.
Over the next few days, crisis talks begin in earnest. They have the location of the League. Approximate numbers, general idea of their quirks, it would be irresponsible not to capitalise on it.
Jakku hospital seems an unlikely place to set up base for a League of Villains, but Shouta’s not going to judge, and focuses on his student, the kid he’s whipped into shape who’s near enough breaking apart at the seams in front of Shouta’s very eyes.
“You’re okay,” Shouta tells Midoriya, holding him by the shoulders to steady him. There are hundreds of heroes here. Hundreds. All prepared for the possibility of everything possible going wrong. It won’t, because Shouta’s kid is going to have to be bait. “You can do this.”
Midoriya’s chin wavers, eyes shining. “I’m sorry, sensei. I really, really am.”
“I’ve told you,” and his laugh is quiet. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I’m sorry we have to send you first. I’m sorry, I’d come with you if I could, but I’ll be with you on the comms the whole time. If you’re quick, we can nip it at the bud, okay?”
His drops Shouta’s eyes, then, face screwing up. It looks so wrong on a face that used to be unmarred and is now raised with scales that don’t belong to him. A quirk forced on him, that he can’t ever be rid of.
“I’m sorry,” Midoriya breathes again. “I’m so sorry.”
And then he turns and walks away before Shouta can tell him for the thousandth time that he doesn’t need to apologise.
He follows the route carefully, unwavering for all his fears, and Shouta stands beside Endeavour, Mic, Miruko, all holding their breaths and waiting for any sign of distress, or victory, to sweep up the League and end them where they stand.
“…Hello?” Midoriya’s shaky voice calls out.
“Good,” Shigaraki’s comes. “You came.” Midoriya’s swallow is audible, and he doesn’t say anything. “Did you do what I asked?”
Shouta shares a look with Endeavour, confusion setting in. Midoriya hadn’t said he’d been tasked with anything.
“You have to take it back,” his student replies, weak and certain at once. “You have to take it, you promised you would if I did.”
“Did you do what I asked?” Shigaraki repeats. Shouta’s hand curls into his scarf. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.
“Yes,” Midoriya hisses. “E-everything. T-take it back, you promised you would take it back. I did everything you asked me to. Please.”
“This was a trap,” Mic murmurs at his side. “This was a trap, the kid led us into a trap—”
“Don’t worry,” Shigaraki’s voice coos, clear as day. “I keep my promises, Midoriya. Everybody’s going to thank you when we’re done, alright? I just wish you could’ve seen it.”
When Midoriya screams, Shouta knows it’s already too late, too far, too much.
They’re overwhelmed in a half second. Nomu crawling out of the walls, villains pouring out from every side, overwhelming the battalion at their back, but all Shouta can do is fight his way to where he knows Midoriya is.
He’s pale. Shivering. Eyes glazed over.
Bloody.
Missing an arm from the elbow down. One half of his face is already decayed, the other half bloody and twitching.
He’s not going to survive this.
It doesn’t stop Shouta from sliding to his side anyway, frantically trying to wrap the kid’s wounds, unable to even think about the words he heard on the comms.
“S-sen…sei…” Midoriya slurs.
“Don’t talk,” he orders sharply, realising that there are tears slipping down his own cheeks. “Don’t talk.”
“Sssss…sorry… had… to…”
“No you didn’t,” he’s angry, he’s so blindingly angry, at himself, at Midoriya, at everything that brought them all here, because months ago, he broke himself apart protecting these kids, and this one just threw it all a-fucking-way. “God, shit, kid, you – what – what the hell—”
Midoriya hiccups. There’s blood spewing from his lips. “He sssss… said… sssaid he’d t-t-take… take it b-back…”
Shouta… Shouta can’t feel anything. He only feels anger.
“Take it back?” he repeats, furious. “Take it back? You – you did all this to – to go back to being quirkless?”
He wonders how long, he wonders how much time Midoriya has spent behind his back, visiting the League when Shouta thought he’d been going home, spending time with his mother, have all of those smiles, that sudden change in attitude all those months ago—
“Was it worth it?” Shouta demands, even though it’s not fair. His student is bleeding out in his arms. He’s spent hours on Midoriya personally. Trained him through the internships, and then through work studies, and even in the nights where Midoriya was angriest, Shouta got him through.
And Midoriya threw it all away.
“Is that all you think you are? You think – you think you were only worth anything because you were quirkless?!”
And his student’s breath becomes light and weak. “W….was… sensei… worth… more… he pr-prom…”
His face screws up in agony, and then falls slack.
The last tear that lands on his body belongs to Shouta.
He promised.
Right up to the end, all Midoriya ever had been was just a scared kid.
Shouta buries six students at the end of the war. They bury the League of Villains, too, which matters a lot, lot less. It took the combined power of a dozen heroes, and a surreptitious new quirk for Togata, to reign in their power. It doesn’t matter that they win, because Shouta buries six kids. Five of them never even knew that Midoriya was to blame.
Looking at their headstones, Shouta would think that Midoriya would be grateful, for that. The look in All Might’s eyes when he found out, too, had been hard enough to bear.
Shouta lost friends, allies, and students, because of one quirkless boy.
You should have expelled him, that old ghost of a voice whispers as he cuts up his licence and hangs up his scarf. He packs his bags, and one for Eri too. He doesn’t know where he’s going. He just knows it needs to be away.
He leaves a sprig of spider-lilies at Midoriya’s grave and wonders how many he received over the years. He just wanted to be a hero.
He was supposed to be a hero.