Archive of Our Own ^beta

all might tells izuku that he can’t be a hero on a sun-dappled thursday, when the skies are a clear, iridescent blue, with nary a cloud in sight. izuku isn’t sure how many hours he spends laying on that rooftop, staring up at the unblemished sky, replaying his words in his head.

“without a quirk… you can’t be a hero.”

somewhere in the distance, he can hear small blasts going off, like fireworks being set in the middle of the day, and the sound rattles him to his core, a familiar, cloying fear because explosions only mean one thing, and it’s been a very long time since he went out with his mother to watch the neighborhood new year firework display.

when the sun begins to make its slow, graceful descent, and the pale blue silk of the sky darkens precariously tipping into a velveteen lavender, izuku wills himself to stand up, and makes a vain attempt at straightening his uniform out, to hide the worst of the damage. the rooftop door is unlocked, by some miracle, so he doesn’t even need to bother anyone. he leaves the building just as the security guards change shifts, and they barely react. one of them waves hesitantly, probably assuming izuku is some employee’s kid.

he walks home, and kicks his shoes off at the door. his mother isn’t there.

that’s strange, and brings up a pang of worry in him. seeing his mother’s face at the end of a hard day is the only thing that keeps him going sometimes. if you get out of bed now, and leave the house, then in a few hours, you get to come back in the house, and see mom! that’s how he cajoles himself on the hardest days.

today had been a hard day.

he’d imagined what he’d say to her on his way back home. “i met all might today. i don’t want to be a hero anymore.”

or “i met all might today. he said i can’t be a hero.”

or simply “i hung out at the library and that’s why i’m late. i didn’t meet anyone special, but i don’t think i want to be a hero anymore.”

he feels the same way he felt when the doctor told him the news. he feels as though a blanket has been laid over him. a blanket, or a veil – or something. something soft, impermeable, separating him from the rest of the world. an outsider, looking in on other people’s magnificent, colorful lights. quirkless made him into a whole other creature, split him up, and took him to a place no one else – not even his mom, who loved him more thn the sun itself – could ever follow. the haze back then had lifted at some point. had lifted pretty quickly, actually, and he’d been back to playing, to laughing, and following kacchan around and asking everyone questions about their magical superpowers he could never truly understand, or touch or feel.

he wonders if he should tell someone about the haze, but the veil is so thin, shimmering, barely there, that it doesn’t seem worth it. he can still see everything… he just can’t touch it.

there’s a note on the coffee table, penned in his mom’s beautiful, loopy handwriting, her letters shaky and anxious. the note says katsuki was in a villain attack and she’s with the bakugous at the hospital. the note begs him to call her.

he checks his phone. he hadn’t looked at it all day. he has so many missed calls and texts. his mother had been ringing him in 15-minute intervals.

he is a bad son. he should call her.

he doesn’t. instead, he opens his texting app and sends her message to let her know he’s home. he was at the library, and his phone was turned off.

she’s left him dinner in the fridge, and the sausages are cut into little octopus shapes, which makes him smile. he finds that he’s not actually that curious to find out what happened to kacchan.

he was in a villain attack today? in the same day as izuku? he just had to one-up him in everything, didn’t he?

he eats his dinner in front of the tv. he does not look at the news. instead, he switches the channel on some mindless korean idol show, where a bunch of attractive boys are doing challenges to raise money for charity. one of them has a glitter quirk. izuku does not reach for his notebook.

he reorients his world around the two new truths at the axis of his being. all might said he can’t be a hero. and kacchan told him to jump off a roof.

kacchan doesn’t come to school for the next week. izuku enjoys the reprieve. he only feels a little bad. mostly, he just feels hollow. he wonders how he would feel if kacchan had actually died, and his last words to izuku had been –

you can’t be a hero take a swan dive off the roof.

he goes to the guidance counsellor.

“i’m not interested in applying to UA anymore,” he says quietly.

he could still apply, realistically. he can’t be a hero, but he could go into the business course, or in gen-ed, or support. after all, his dad works in hero merchandising, so it’s not like izuku is blind to the avenues in the heroics industry that are open to him, but –

but he had imagined it, just for a moment, after what all might said. he had imagined going to ua. not to be a hero, but… something else. in the pristine business student uniform, perhaps, sitting in midnight’s class. he had imagined going to ua, and then he imagined sitting down for lunch in the campus’ expansive park, from the photographs he’d obsessed over on their site, meant to present the school in the best possible light. he’d sit alone at lunch – he can’t really imagine that ua would be that much different, after all, from aldera. he’d be alone, which would be okay.  and he’d imagined –

kacchan. in a hero student uniform. surrounded by extras from the hero course. throwing his lunch into the mud, and setting off explosions that would tarnish izuku’s pristine ua blazer. and he had realized that… three more years of that – of watching kacchan excel and succeed and blast extras and izuku in the dust on his way to the top…

what’s the point of putting up with that, if he couldn’t at least become a hero at the end of it all?

the guidance counsellor praises him for being realistic. she gives him a list of other schools. they’re names izuku knows by heart. they’re the schools that come up if you press schools that accept quirkless students into heroogle.

“is there… a job i can do, where i don’t have to disclose my quirkless status?” he asks.

maybe one day he’ll learn not to ask questions anymore.

she seems puzzled. “well,” she says, “i mean, government employees don’t normally disclose their quirk status. it could pose a security risk. so if you wanted to go into civil service…”

that’s not something he’d ever thought about. sure, everyone always said he could be a cop or a doctor, which are technically affiliated with government but… civil service? a paper pusher? is that all he’s –

yes. yes it is. even all might said so.

she hands him a couple of pamphlets on working for government – internships he could take, classes that will make him more appealing. salary ranges he can expect depending on his experience.

“midoriya-san, i just wanted to ask – i know you’re friends so – is bakugou-san going to be back soon?”

his hand is on the door when she asks that. he presses down on the handle.

“me and kacchan aren’t really that close anymore,” he says. is kacchan all anyone at this school cares about? he wants to ask.

he knows the answer to that.

his mom tells him kacchan will be back to school next week, and isn’t that wonderful? he’d declined to go visit kacchan in the hospital. he didn’t want to overwhelm him, he’d said. they’d catch up at school. all might had saved kacchan from the sludge villain.

but, a small, vindictive part of izuku thinks, he saved me first.

he’s sitting at the dinner table, kicking his feet back and forth, thinking of nothing in particular, while his mom recounts some story about yuki-chan from accounting and a humorous mishap with some forms, when he blurts out

“i’m not going to be a hero.”

once the words are out of his mouth, he can’t unsay them. mom takes it in stride. well, as much as someone as anxious as her can. her cutlery drops to the floor with a clatter, and then she’s out of her chair, and her arms wrap around him, pulling him tight into one of her warm, lavender scented hugs, and he clings to her desperately, with more force than he’d clung even to all might.

“okay,” she’d said. “okay, you can – you can do something else. you can do whatever you want.”

“you’re not… disappointed?”

“izuku,” she says, her shaky hands brushing through his unruly curls, “you’ve always been a hero to me.”

later that night, with the plates cleared away, they sit on the sofa together, and he’s curled into her side, and they’re watching the idol show.

“i like the glitter one,” izuku says mindlessly.

“mm, i think the one with the bunny ears is cuter, he reminds me of you!” she argues, and taps his nose.

he sneezes. he laughs. he feels lighter than he has in years.

after she’s gone to bed and the lights are all out, he’s back in his room, his pale face illuminated by nothing but the soft blue light of his phone screen as he searches

do government employees have to disclose their quirk status?

just to be on the safe side.

he goes through the pamphlets from the guidance counsellor. ministry of internal affairs, health, education – they all sound okay. not one calls to him particularly. ministry of education would probably be the easiest to get to – he’s good with kids, he knows. he’ll make more if he goes into ministry of internal though, especially if he ends up working in security, and he hates to admit, but money is a factor…

and then, as he’s flipping through them, at the very bottom, nondescript, and unassuming, a little worn, even –

hero public safety commission. getting involved in the other side of heroics!

his heart stutters to a sudden sharp halt in his chest, and he swears he forgets how to breathe, just for those few brilliant moments.

of course he knows about the hspc. everyone knows about them – they control the billboard hero rankings, they hold the hero licensing exams, they form policy surrounding heroics. they control the her industry of japan.

but there’s a reason izuku hadn’t thought about them much in terms of employment. after all, members and employees of the hero commission can’t be heroes. it’s seen as a conflict of interest. members of the hero commission can’t be heroes. izuku can’t be a hero.

but…

the end of junior high comes without much fanfare for him.

sure, kacchan had laid off after he got saved by all might, but that didn’t mean he’d stopped completely. more like he’d just found himself too slammed with schoolwork and making sure he was ready for the ua exam than anything.

and izuku was not preparing for any exam in particular. whatever high school he ended up in, as long as he ddn’t flunk out completely, he would be fine, because, the more he researched, the more obvious it became – the hspc was painfully understaffed.

he looked through their site for any internship or volunteering opportunities – surely they had some – like setting up hero licensing exam centers or something – and sure enough, he’d come across an announcement written in such a desperate, glum tone, he could only imagine the amount of people who volunteered for a job like that.

after all, you couldn’t take the exam, if you helped set it up. ever.

he’d shaped up his cv and sent the generic email address an upbeat message about being interested in helping set up the next exam, and asking them to keep him in mind for any positions that they thought he was suited for, and then he called it a day.

he’d almost shouted happily when he got an email back and it wasn’t a generic response. he agonized for ages over what to wear, and he’d tried to get his tie right watching tutotial after tutorial before finally giving up. in the end, he showed up to his interview in a button down and black jeans, and his red sneakers. they knew he was still in junior high… surely they wouldn’t expect him to be too professional?

the guy who sat across him in the meeting room looked dead on his feet, and izuku felt a little bad. just how understaffed were they?

the interview had been a blur. izuku knew he’d been stuttering, and his answers were halfway to incomprehensible. his shirt was soaked with sweat, and his hands were cramping with how hard he was gripping his thighs to keep them from shaking. he’d probably wound up bruising himself.

the only thing he hadn’t stuttered in saying was “i’m not interested in being a hero.”

the man looked only a little more awake after that. in the end, he’d told izuku that if he signed all the relevant documents and nda’s, he’d have himself an internship. they were even going to pay him, which he hadn’t even thought about.

he’d spent the last months of junior high commuting to the commission central building  once a week on fridays to help with whatever no one else could be bothered doing. sometimes that meant processing paperwork, or writing press releases, or setting up meeting rooms and bringing coffees, or taking notes during meetings – all things he was rather good at.

the amount of confidential information that passed through his trembling, anxious hands could have brought the government down. he knew that, rationally. he didn’t think it mattered, particularly. he wasn’t a hero. he was just the kid who occasionally slung papers.  

yokumiro-san was the one technically in charge of izuku’s internship. izuku’s job was to help him set up for the licensing exams, but those only happened twice a year, so the rest of the time, he loaned izuku out to other overworked agents.

it wasn’t terrible.

before the start of highschool, mom had helped him write an email to the principal, explaining that as he had a rather precarious internship in government, his quirk status should remain undisclosed.

the principal and his teachers took that in stride – they were nothing like aldera’s lackadaisical administration. instead, his homeroom teacher praised his tenacity in achieving his dream of working for government.

so there. no more quirkless deku, no more kacchan, no more bullies. the first time a test came back, with the full 108% - extra credit included – and no red marks on it, and the teacher didn’t even attempt to accuse him of cheating, he knew he was finally free.

working in government wasn’t his dream. he’d only ever had one dream, and that dream had died on a rooftop that izuku had only miraculously left through a staircase. now, he was simply trudging along through the everyday life, and the best he could hope for was that his secret would remain safe.

kacchan had made it into ua, of course. he’d been the top scorer in the entrance exam, which wasn’t really a surprise. kacchan was powerful. his quirk –

so much of his meager intern salary went to scar wax and liquid latex to disguise what kacchan’s quirk could do. he was lucky that his new school uniform let him choose to wear a high-neck polo instead of the collared button-down.

he still keeps to himself in school. he doesn’t leave his stuff unattended in the classroom. he buys notebooks from a specialized seller who modifies the paper against fire quirks. he doesn’t really… talk to anyone. he doesn’t put his hand up in class unless he’s called on. he still mutters. he still writes his notes. but with his quirk status a blank unknown, and no one for miles who had any clue that his name could be read as deku, he’s just another quiet loner that no one bothers with, and that’s how he likes it.

he’s the same at work, really. he keeps his head down, makes sure his notes are neat, and brings yokumira-san coffee from the starfucks down the road, instead of the comission’s shitty vending machines. sometimes a spark will ignite in him, when he sees a particularly interesting quirk in action, or when something jumps out at him from the case files he sorts, but he tamps it down quickly. he’s learned his lesson. he knows better.

you can’t be a hero take a swan dive off the –

sometimes, in his dreams, the two voices superimpose onto one another, so all might is the one telling him to –

he avoids tall buildings. not that he has any work on the top floors of the commission offices anyway.

yokumira-san is nice to him, in the absent-minded way in which tired people are often nice, because they don’t have the energy to be actively cruel. he never stops izuku’s muttering, and sometimes, if izuku words a suggestion on improving their workflow in a particularly careful way, he just waves his hand and accepts it, and izuku gets to go ahead with his plan.

truthfully, that’s how most of the people at the commission are. he’s not sure most of them know his name – he just goes by “the intern” which makes him sound kind of badass – like a secret agent.

technically, he works for government, handles highly sensitive data, and liases with people he has no business liaising with, so he could be a secret agent… but that’s for people with quirks.

kacchan gets into ua, and the veil trembles, just a little. izuku wonders what would happen if he tries to reach for it and lift it, but then  - what’s the point?

there’s nothing on the other side for him.

it’s a quiet monday, and he’s clearing away one of the big meeting rooms after the president had to talk to someone in organized crime about – something. he hadn’t actually sat in that meeting. he puts away the disposable coffee cups and plates so he can take them to the recycling dumpster. he makes sure any other paper is carefully fed to the shredder, and the shreds go into the incinerator in the basement, which is standard procedure.

someone had given up on their note taking and just ended up doodling pictures of mount lady making funny faces. it makes him smile a little. it has to go in the shredder too though, because it has the date and the hspc logo on the paper.

he catches up on the news about a false alarm security breach at ua during his train ride home. he and mom have dinner and then skype his dad, who’s just waking up in america. it’s nice.

then everything goes to hell when the league of villains attack a ua training exercise.

he’s barely made it through the door home from school, to find his mom packing an overnight bag. she kisses his forehead and dashes for the bakugous’ place, while izuku’s work phone – they’d given him one, because the security on his regular phone couldn’t be trusted, even if all he did was send kaomojis back and forth with yokumira-san – is blowing up with calls and texts. they want him in at the office, and they want him in now.

he calls a taxi, and starts planning the expense form he’ll have to fill out for it, and then he gets into the building, and is whisked away by the hustle and bustle of a government agency in full panic mode. the president is in a meeting with ua staff and the police, and the analysts – all three of them that work full time – are glued to their screens.

“took you long enough,” yokumira-san says gruffly, and izuku flinches. but then the older man claps him on the shoulder and drags him in the room with the analysts.

“take some paper and make yourself useful,” he says.

izuku stares blankly at him.

“what?”

“i’ve heard your little mutters,” yokumira says. “and i’ve seen those notebooks of yours. so – here’s the footage we salvaged from the usj. get to working, kid!”

izuku plugs the headset yokumira-san shoves at him and turns the beat-up work laptop on. the hspc logo blinks at him. he signs in, he pulls the files. he has a stak of hspc branded papers, and an hspc pen between his teeth.

he plays the videos.

he wonders if this could have been his life – erasrehead, and thirteen standing between him and danger – trying to teach him –

he can’t help but agree with the blue-haired villain. erasrerhead is so cool.

of the underground pros, he’s izuku’s favorite – always has been. izuku used to dream about getting a quirk, and if he could have any quirk in the world –

he scratches at the side of his face absent-mindedly. the pharmacy had been out of the liquid latex he normally uses, so he’d switched brands, and it made his skin all itchy.

it’s late in the evening when yokumira-san calls for a break, and someone wheels in a trolley piled with takeaway – to keep them going through the night. the president is still talking to nezu and the cops. izuku thinks, briefly, with a small flash of excitement nezu!

he’s learned by now that there’s not much he can do about it. he just has to quiet those worthless little sparks before they can blind him – the way they’d had him blinded until all might –

you can’t be a hero. take a swan dive off the -

maybe erasrehead wouldn’t have defended him. maybe erasrehead wouldn’t have thought he was worth defending. after all, if he’d gone to ua, he wouldn’t have had the protection he does now. the secret that a flimsy piece of paper proclaiming him a government employee protected. he was only safe here, in the hspc building, where no one knew – or cared – about his quirk, because none of them were trying to become heroes.

yokumira-san calls the school for him in the morning. “midoriya-san is urgently needed at his workplace, so please excuse his absence.”

izuku texts his mom – kacchan is okay, thankfully.

he goes on a coffee run, and brings everyone as much coffee as he can carry.

“that’s the president’s order,” a guy he can’t put a name to says quickly, and snatches a venty caramel frapp with five shots of espresso. izuku wonders if someone her age should be having this much caffeine, but considering his personal choice of cold brew as black as his undereye bags, maybe it’s none of his business.

things go back to normal after that. people at school don’t really ask about his absence. all they know about him is that he wants to work for government, and has a time-consuming internship. his grades are good, and he’ll give you tutoring if you ask, but he prefers his own company. most people assume he has some kind of intelligence quirk, and chalk up all his weirdness to that.

no one ever calls him deku, and no one ever will, as long as his secret is safe.

he’s not supposed to come back in until next week, but yokumira texts him, saying it’s urgent.

for the second time in as many days, he takes a taxi. he hopes the finance office won’t think he’s expensing these trips willy-nilly.

yokumira grabs his shoulder, and izuku flinches, habitually, even though the scar tissue doesn’t hurt anymore, and marches him into the elevator, and up, up, up –

izuku doesn’t have business on the high floors of the building.

take a swan dive off the

he has no idea what he’s doing in the president’s office. did he get her coffee order wrong?

“i’ve been going over the analysis work from the past couple of days,” she says.

“oh,” izuku says, “sorry.”

“what are you sorry for?”

he shrugs vaguely. “not sure. but you called me in so… i guess i did something wrong?”

anxiety is catching up to him. if he gets fired, he’ll lose the protection of government employees are encouraged not to disclose their quirk status, if he gets fired no other government agency will want him, because who manages to fuck up a job at the hero commission – and you can’t be a hero-

“nothing… of the sort,” she says carefully. she’s a very careful person. he’s studied her appearances meticulously. “i was rather hoping to – all the work you presented is your own, yes? you didn’t take notes for one of the other analysts?”

“um – no,” he shakes his head, his curls falling into his eyes. “it’s all – it’s all stuff i wrote. from the videos? is it bad?”

she huffs out a sigh and presses her fingers to her forehead. all that coffee can’t be good for her if she gets hypotension.

“midoriya-san, we have people with analysis and intelligence quirks in this division whose work is less… detailed than what you provided.”

“is that... bad?” he cringes at his own voice. of course it is. he wouldn’t be called in if it was good. “i promise, i didn’t mean to make anyone look bad,” he says quickly.

all he’s learned from all these years, is to keep his head down, and apologize, and look sorry and promise it won’t happen again.

“your internship application listed you as quirkless,” she says, ignoring his question. “have you ever been tested for an intelligence quirk?”

“i’ve been tested for all the types of quirks,” he says quietly. “i have the extra toe joint and everything.”

this is it. he understands now. he outdid some of the people with an analysis quirk – though he’s not sure how that could be a possibility. and the hero commission could have a quirkless intern, of course, but a quirkless intern who outperforms the regular employees – yeah. he gets it. being safe was nice while it lasted. maybe he could convince mom to let him switch to a correspondence school. maybe he could leave japan afterwards. go to a country with a higher percentage of quirkless in their population. maybe he could

take a swan dive off the –

“yokumira here says you told him in your interview you have no plans to enter heroics. in fact you said – “

“i don’t want to be hero,” izuku says quietly, a little desperately. “i promise, i don’t.”

after all, being realistic is what made his last few months at aldera a little more tolerable.

“i see,” says the president with a sigh. “you understand of course, that if you wanted to be a hero, we, being the hero commission and all, could – “

“i’m quirkless,” he interrupts her. he knows he’s getting fired, so what does it matter. they probably wouldn’t write him a recommendation even if he was polite anyway. “what would i get branded as? the nothing hero: worthless deku! i can’t be a hero.”

“i see,” says the president.

“i’m not hawks,” izuku says, “you can’t… spin my story, and brand me in a way that would make the public –“

the president’s look hardens. “how do you know about – “

izuku shrugs. it had been in a file that he’d looked at – ages ago. “i’m not going to tell anyone,” he says. he smiles, and he’s not sure if it’s reassuring, or bitter. “who would i even tell?”

turns out he’s not fired, because the next time he’s due to come in, and he’s at home, taking a nap, yokumiro-san blows his phone up. turns out that’s all the president wanted to offer him. a chance to fast-track him through the commission’s hero-making machine, like hawks. like miruko.

but izuku knows better. he does get moved to the analysis division though.

when the ua sports festival rolls around, his mom is excited, because auntie mitsuki offered her extra guest tickets. izuku has always wanted to see the festival live, but it’s not like they could afford it before.

he smiles, and tells her to have fun with her best friend. he’s got plans anyway – a couple of the analysts are going out for drinks, and even though izuku isn’t old enough for alcohol, all he has to do is flash his hspc id, and they’ll let anything slide.

“who’s your favorite hero?” one of the girls asks, and izuku shrugs.

“i… don’t really like heroes a lot,” he says quietly. he’s nursing a beer, because it’s his first time drinking. it’s bitter, but he likes it.

“kid… look at where we’re working!” one of the guys exclaims. “how can you not like heroes?”

“oh, please,” the same girl waves her hand. “as if you didn’t lose all your respect for hawks after reading one report from him – “ she claps izuku on the shoulder. he flinches. “hawks’ handwriting is terrible,” she says in a mock-whisper.

izuku manages a weak smile.

“so, if you don’t like heroes, who’s your favorite villain then? or vigilante, or whatever?”

izuku promptly chokes.

“oh come on! everyone has a favorite villain,”someone says from across the table. aki-chan here looooooooves overhaul!”

“shut up!”

“yeah, it’s all those pre-quirk dramas about the tough yakuza falling for the plain girl – “

the table dissolves into laughs. izuku thinks this is nice. they’re all together, having a drink and a laugh. and though he is sitting at the table with them, in truth, he’s sipping his beer from the other side of the veil. alone.

his mom is late coming home that night – she and bakugous have gone out to celebrate kacchan’s victory. izuku looks through the highlight reel on the news. he watches kacchan on the victor’s podium, muzzled, chained down like an animal.

he’s surprised at the vehemence which arises in him when he thinks good. finally someone else sees it too. good.

kacchan will be an amazing hero one day. maybe even the best. he catches the eye of one of his all might posters.

you can’t be a –

maybe it’s time to redecorate his room.

spring break is supposed to be exactly that – break. yokumiro-san had told him to take all of the two weeks off, do his homework, hang out with people his own age –

izuku had smiled, bowed and thanked him. two weeks of hanging out at home alone while his mom was at work then – not much different from how his breaks normally went.

he takes a fat stack of paperwork with him anyway – nothing confidential, just some expense forms – and a case file about some serial arson – only property damage and no dead bodies yet but they wanted to keep an eye on it.

of course, it all goes to shit. the vigilante stendhal takes a deep dive into the refreshing waters of supervillainy, starts dropping bodies, and takes down ingenium, which actually pisses izuku off, because though he doesn’t care about heroes anymore, ingenium had always, always been one of his favorites.

he gets called into the debrief after ingenium’s little brother and endeavor’s son – holy shit that’s endeavor in the room- take matters into their own hands. there’s someone else running point, he’s just there to take notes, but then somehow it ends up being him tasked with writing the official press releases and statements for the media.

endeavor takes the typed notes from him, flips though them and hums vaguely, which is probably as good as it will get. as far as heroes go, he’s okay, izuku thinks. powerful, flashy quirk, and a straightforward, single-minded personality. he’s a nice contrast to all might.

he’s a little like –

take a swan dive off the –

“good work kid,” says endeavor. “let’s go, shouto.”

he hears him talking to someone else on his way out of the room, catches the tailend of “…so young, does the commission breed them –“

they have him in the room for stein’s interrogation, to get down the details of his quirk, because the usual analyst has called in sick.

“that is a child,” stein says.

“i’m fifteen,” izuku says, at the same time as the detective, who says “he’s fifteen.”

he doesn’t like stein, and so he makes no effort to be nice in his analysis. in fact, he thinks his notes can be described as scathing.

after that, it’s quiet for a while. he gets to work more on that arson case, and pulls out cold files from a similar incident some years ago where a spontaneous immolation had taken out acres of land on sekoto peak.

they’re too heavily redacted for him to do much with, so he passes them on to yokumiro-san, who will hopefully pass them on to someone else with high enough clearance. it’s quiet for a while.

then, somehow, kacchan gets himself kidnapped, and then it’s all hands on deck in the situation room to sort out his retrieval.

this time, izuku is in the actual situation room. anxiety claws at his throat, and he knows if he thinks about it even for a second, he’s going to vomit. he can’t allow that to happen, so instead, he rattles out a detailed breakdown of kacchan’s quirk. he knows kacchan’s quirk like the back of his hand. the side of his face itches from the inferior latex, and he doesn’t scratch at it. instead, he talks about kacchan and his bright hands, and his bright future.

the league of villains isn’t going to kill him. hopefully. probably.

but what if they do?

he’s staring, eyes glued to the screens running various news reports, with a styrofoam cup of coffee someone had shoved in his hands, monitoring the internal channels of the hspc’s teams server for updates, and he’s shaking so hard his teeth are chattering.

“hey,” someone says, next to him. “ i didn’t think to ask before, but do you… know that kid?”

he grits his teeth to stop them from making noise.

we like quiet hands, izuku, unless they are kacchan’s.

“no,” he says. “not really.”

it’s true. he doesn’t know kacchan. he hasn’t known him in years.

take a swan dive off the –

no one thinks to call his school this time. he texts his mom that he’s fine, but won’t be leaving hspc headquarter for a while.

look at all these people working, he thinks. look at all these people working to bring kacchan home.

eraserhead talks about kacchan’s personality at a press conference. reassures the reporters that kacchan would never become a villain.

the veil shudders, like curtains being blown away by a gust of wind.

from the other side of it, izuku watches the press conference, and drinks the cold shitty coffee. someone had shoved a platter of chicken wings at him at some point, but he didn’t want to get his hands dirty – he needed to be able to type.

kacchan would never become a villain.

a sudden, unbidden thought comes to izuku – a thought he’d had often, but never crystalized quite so clearly – if he does, i’ll kill him.

kacchan needs to become a hero, because – because if he doesn’t, if he doesn’t then –

you can’t be a hero –

if kacchan doesn’t become a hero, then what’s the point of izuku giving up on his dreams?

in the situation room, he watches with the rest of the commission staff – including the president – with abject horror – as all might goes down in kamino ward.

you can’t be a hero –

he doesn’t like heroes anymore, but maybe his fellow analysts are right. maybe everyone can have a favorite villain, and he just found his.

all might goes down, goes down hard, falls to his knees, spitting out blood. all might is smiling anyway. skeletal, ruined, but he’s smiling. all might goes down so kacchan can be a hero, and he’s fucking smiling about it.

take a swan dive off the –

“i’m going to throw up,” he says quietly. he doesn’t even realize he’s speaking.

he goes out of the situation room. he walks into the men’s room. he hurls the coffee, and whatever else is in his stomach.

he flushes the toilet. he washes his hands, and rinses out his mouth.

all might went down. all might broke himself at the altar of kacchan’s potential. and though izuku can’t be a hero, he and all might clearly aren’t that different after all.

izuku wonders what would have happened if he’d been at ua, watching kacchan take the world by storm from his proper place, at the bottom of the food chain. that’s why he hadn’t gone in the end, though he could have made a reasonably good business course entrant. that’s why he’d gone to a normal high school with normal classmates, and gotten himself a government internship where government employees are encouraged not to disclose their quirk status and even so, somehow, his life was still the kacchan show.

someone will have to write the releases about all might. they’ll probably give it to him. he should get back to the situation room. he should start emailing reporters.

instead, his feet carry him to the elevator.

he has no business on the commission’s higher floors. the buttons turn yellow. he passes the president’s offices. he passes the meeting rooms for government officials. he goes up, up, up. topmost floor.

it’s empty. everyone’s downstairs, caught up in the chaos, in the eye of the storm that is kacchan.

let someone else worry about kacchan.

izuku takes the stairs and slams his shoulder into the door to the roof. that’s hawks’ preferred way to enter the building so he doesn’t get swarmed by fans and reporters.

he thinks about the way the handle of the rooftop door had given under his palm. he knows what he would have done that day if he’d found it locked.

the door had opened, and he’d taken the stairs down, and walked out of the high rise, and waved back at the confused security guard who’d waved at him.

the door to the hero commission’s rooftop gives, and he finds himself outside. he’s outside, and the evening air is crisp and cool, but he can’t breathe. he wants to be sick again, but there’s nothing in his stomach.

kacchan killed all might. kacchan take a swan dive off the –

he’d known he could never become a hero. a part of him had always known that. all might had confirmed it, sure, but –

it would have been such a pain if all might had said something like that in front of cameras – oh gosh, it would have been all hands on deck coordinating with the pr department at might tower to get it all sorted out with the media.

he walks to the edge of the roof, and peers down at the street below.

the veil has been blown away – by the wind this high up, or by kacchan’s explosions, and the echo of his vicious screams blasting from the speakers in the situation room  - he’s not sure.

the two new centres of his reality finally collide. he can’t be a hero, and kacchan told him to jump off a roof. but beneath that is something else, something uglier that had been simmering, distorted by the veil, or by izuku’s own lack of willingness to understand it:

all might has been dying for a while. and he thought kacchan was a worthy final stand. twice.

he takes his shoes off.

this is what he’s been careening towards since that day when all might –

well. sure, he’d taken the slow way down the building. but even then he’d known, not all of him had made it off that rooftop. the sky had been really blue. yokumiro-san is about to be ridiculously overworked again. he’d meant to help him revise the posting for interns with a rolling start date on the commission site.

oh, well.

all might chose to end his own career, than to allow, even for a moment, a risk to kacchan’s future as a hero.

he wonders, if he’d gone to ua, by some miracle, if somehow it had been him in the ruins of kamino ward, if –

he knows the answer to that. he knows. he knows.

he can’t be a hero, but kacchan, with his powerful quirk, with his drive and determination – god did he really use to idealize eraserhead? –

take a swan dive off the –

izuku does.

it had been a busy night. with everything going on, and pretty much all personnel crammed into the biggest conference room they had, staring at the news as it unfolded, everyone trying to pull some semblance of a strategy, or a plan, or something –

hawks had been called in urgently – too late for him to join the brawl at kamino, but he could be used at headquarters – to bolster morale, if nothing else – and he’d brought food too, because god knows all the handlers always looked a step away form death. he’d kept his wings folded, squashed in the corner of the room, looking through the hero network on his phone, monitoring his fellow pros’ reactions, and –

“i’m going to throw up,” someone says, softly.

there’s a kid – since when is there a kid – who walks out of the room. he catches a snatch of conversation – it’s an analysis intern, still in highschool, who can blame him – they’re all back on task, staring at the video from all angles, of all might going down.

hawks looks away from the screen towards the window. it’s night. the lights of the city are a symphony of illumination. and then, he sees the blur, and before he can think, with a yell, he clears the room, slams clean through the window, and careens towards the ground. he catches the kid.

they both end up in the infirmary. a nurse is patiently pulling glass shards out of his ainwgs and his arm. the kid is unconscious in the other cot.

“did anyone call his mom?” hawks asks. he’s a little slow and loopy, because they doped him up with the good painkillers.

“yokumiro’s on it,” the nurse says.

they don’t talk much after. when she’s done fixing him, she tells him to go the fuck to sleep and think twice before hurling himself through anymore windows.

izuku comes to slowly. he feels… floaty. he wonders if that means he’s dead. it’s a pretty tall building. it would be… super weird if he fell and didn’t die.

unfortunately, he’s not so lucky.

he realizes this from the beeping. and from the sound of his mom’s soft, devastated weeping beside him. the hero commission snitched on him to his mom.

he doesn’t have the strength to reassure her. he’s not sure what to even say, to reassure her. he can hear her talking to someone else – probably yokumiro-san.

“i should have known,” she says, “when he said he doesn’t want to go to ua, or be a hero. i should have known – i thought he’d just changed his mind, but… being a hero is all he ever talked about, it’s all he ever wanted, and then he suddenly just stopped, and i should have known – and – “

“you can’t blame yourself,” yokumiro-san says, which is what izuku would have also said. “he was in a room full of analysts with intelligence quirks right before he did it, and none of us caught what he was planning on doing –“

“i just want to know why –“ his mom wails.

her voice gets a little more distant.

“she’s outside now, so you can stop pretending. i know you’re awake.”  

the president of the hero commission is in his hospital room, and she looks very tired.

“hawks saved you,” she says. “if you don’t remember.”

“oh,” says izuku. “i have to thank him.”

“he brought you a flower.”

izuku turns to the bedside table. there’s a couple of cards, and a pot with some grden variety pale blue flower in it.

“hawks is nice,” izuku says vaguely. he’s not sure what drugs he’s on, but he doesn’t really… feel much.

“yes, very,” the president agrees. “we trained him like that.”

“good job,” izuku says. he feels like his body is not his own.

“did all might die?”

“no,” says the president. she sounds really, really tired. “he didn’t. he’ll be fine.”

“mm, no he won’t,” izuku says. “i’ve seen his wound. he’s even worse now, isn’t he?”

“what do you mean, you’ve seen his wound?”

izuku tries to shake his head, but the motion just makes him dizzy. he thought everyone knew about all might – at least here, at the commission.

“he told me on the roof,” he says. “when he saved me from the sludge villain.”

“kid, i’m going to need you to take several steps back on this,” says the president.

izuku furrows his brows. it makes sense though. she hadn’t been there. no one else had been there, when all might told him –

take a swan dive you can’t be a hero.

“did kacchan die?” he asks instead.

it would be such a waste if kacchan died, because all might went down to save him. it would be such a waste if kacchan died, because kacchan is going to become a hero. kacchan has an awesome quirk. he’s going to save so many people. it doesn’t matter that izuku –

“do you mean bakugou katsuki? no. he didn’t die.”

“oh,” says izuku, placated. “that’s nice. kacchan’s really awesome, you know. he’s going to be a hero.”

“oh?” says the commission president. “is he now?”

izuku smiles at her. “sure! he’s going to be the best hero ever. he’ll be stronger than all might for sure. he’ll be the number one hero, because he’s got a great quirk. you know – boom! – he’s going to save lots of people. or, i guess… extras – that’s what he calls everyone. but he’ll save them anyway. and beat all the villains. and everyone. kacchan will beat everyone. that’s why all might saved him,” he concludes.

this is the thing, sasaki thinks as she stares down at the kid in the hospital bed. he’s hooked to all the machinery, and he’s drugged to high heaven, and he has no filter at all – not that he ever did – everyone who’d run into him had heard his inconsequential mutters at some point – this job is all about heartbreak, and she’d steeled herself against it early on.

you can’t go around buying kids from their neglectful parents, and then systematically breaking them down to turn them into perfect little soldiers and villain killing machines without becoming a little hard on the inside.

but the kid wasn’t one of their conveyor belt mass-produced hero-hopeful projects. he was an intern. sure, he saw more stuff than a regular intern probably should, but they were painfully understaffed, and at the end of the day, someone had to get the work done.

she’d pulled his files after the -  well. she’d pulled his files after. his background check was clean – nothing more than some schoolyard mischief, really, decent grades, though nothing outstanding, attending an average highschool, living in an average neighborhood with a mom who worked an average desk job, and a dad who did hero merchandising abroad. a clean, perfectly respectable record for both parents. izuku midoriya was so average, it almost looked suspicious. he’d applied for the internship at the start of his last year of junior high, when usually most students remembered they needed something to boost their hero school applications, and he’d done alright in his interview. he’d kept his head down, and done whatever tasks were requested of him. nice, polite to everyone, but not overly. his analysis had stood out, and that’s why she’d singled him out to begin with.  

his vehement refusal to be fast tracked was a surprise, but not a red flag in and of itself – after all, people like him, who relied on their intelligence, did tend to balk at physical hardship. and hero training was all about physical hardship. it would have been an interesting social experiment to debut a quirkless hero, and it would certainly have earned them some pr, but at the end of the day, they had bigger fish to fry, with the league of villains, and stein, and fucking all might, so she’d tabled that for another time, and then –

she’d watched in quiet horror as the kid sped towards the ground with hawks going down after him in a devastating explosion of glass shards and red feathers.

the kid. he was sixteen. by sixteen, hawks had –

but this wasn’t one of their special projects. this was a highschooler who did paperwork for mera’s lazy ass in his free time. a highschooler who had said i don’t like heroes, even though he worked at the proverbial hotbed of hero production. a highschooler who knew bakugou katsuki, and –

apparently also knew all might’s secret. which was supposed to be a national fucking secret, under so many embargoes that –

when she got her hands on all might, she’d make him wish that all for one had finished him off with the earful she’d given him.

the kid is loopy with drugs, which means it’s easy to interrogate him. about all might. about kacchan. about the sludge villain.

she thinks she gets it, a little. the way the kid talks – kacchan sounds like a childhood crush – adorable, really. so there he is, watching his friend -crush – being taken in by villains, seeing all might nearly die, worrying that maybe the same thing happened to said friend – crush – and so he goes up to the roof and –

it doesn’t make sense.

“why did you jump off the roof, izuku?” she asks, when the kid takes a moment to breathe in between waxing poetic about kacchan. honestly, that feral, explosive creature does not deserve such a cute nickname.

“oh,” izuku frowns.

if they were doing this by the book, there would be a child psychiatrist here. a cop, maybe. the kid’s mom, who’s currently being charmed by hawks into not trying to sue the commission because holy hell, they cannot afford the scandal.

“well,” the kid says, and lifts his small shoulders in a shrug. “he told me to.”

oh, okay. they’re getting somewhere. a compulsion quirk of some kind?

“who did, izuku?” she asks. she uses the same tone she’d used when she’d taken hawks away from his mother. she wonders if the greater good is worth it, though hawks had emerged from training more or less as a functional human being…

“kacchan,” the kid says brightly. “you know how i’m quirkless right? mhm,” he answers his own question, “but i wanted to be a hero! i wanted to be a hero real bad, i wanted – “

his voice cracks. when the tears come, they come slowly, pouring out of his eyes – and his eyes are so fucking big – and he’s still smiling. “i wanted to be a hero, but i’m quirkless. and kacchan said if i want a quirk, i could probably get one in my next life, so i should just take a swan dive off the roof. cause i can’t be a hero without a quirk.”

the tears slide down his face slowly, and clear away patches of his skin. that’s not quite right. he’d fallen from a roof, so no one had really had time to clean him up – they would have let his mom fuss over him, after that, but what clears away under the downpour of snot and tears is meticulously, carefully applied layers and layers of makeup. he scratches at the side of his face absent-mindedly, with the hand that isn’t hooked to machinery. some of his skin peels off.

she’s seen scar wax, of course. their undercover agents frequently change their faces on the go. it’s also useful for disguising mutations that aren’t that visible, but could still cause some discrimination. it’s just a little strange to see a kid peel his own face off while crying about being suicide baited.

because that’s what it is. kacchan – bakugou katsuki – suicide baited izuku midoriya, and from the sounds of it, midoriya has been protecting him from the consequences of his actions for a while.

she offers him her handkerchief. he wipes at his face.

the starburst on his cheek isn’t that big, really. as far as scars go, it’s not the worst thing you could have on your face. she’s sure the flame villain dabi would kill to have this be the extent of his facial scarring.

but there it is, anyway. kacchan has a powerful quirk, perfect for heroics. and clearly, he’d practiced it.

the pieces of the puzzle are coming together, a little too slow for her liking, but they are.

here’s what she knows:

izuku midoriya, up to middle school, wanted to do nothing except be a hero. then, suddenly, after his best friend – crush – bully – is attacked, he pulls a complete personality change, decides to drop the hero talk, and looks into joining civil service instead. gets himself an internship with the hero commission, and resolutely refuses to be involved in hero work, even when the opportunity is presented to him.

and then he tries to kill himself.

“we offered to make you a hero,” she says.

he looks at her the same way he’d looked at her that day in her office, when she asked about his analysis notes. like he thinks she’s an idiot.

“can’t be a hero without a quirk,” he says. he’s still smiling. smiling and crying, and smiling. “that’s why i should – “

he makes a motion in front of his throat with his hand. mimes slashing himself open.

what are they teaching these kids in school? she wonders.

“who said that?” she asks quietly. and god help that kacchan kid if it was him again. his quirk is perfect for heroics, sure. so why not spirit him away from ua and fast track him the nasty way, the bad way, the way –

i will not torture a child for fun, she thinks. i will not torture a child for fun, it is immoral and unethical. but… they had beaten the attitude out of brats like him before, hadn’t they?

they’d never quite succeeded with hawks, but then again, they hadn’t gone that route with hawks either. his bad boy image was worth its weight in gold.

and the kid smiles – hasn’t stopped, really, and says “all might! on the roof. when he saved me from the sludge villain.”

hawks brings the kid’s mom in then, so she can talk to her son, who’s clearly gone through some sort of psychotic break that somehow no one not even a while department of trained analysts noticed.

the kid says “hawks!” and he sounds so fucking young, and so excited. “thanks for the flower!”

she makes eye contact with hawks on her way out.

it’s just her and mera and a couple of the handlers and analysts in the situation room. this is what she knows:

izuku midoriya has been diagnosed medically quirkless very young. he was best friends with bakugou katsuki, until the relationship soured. he was bullied a lot. one day, on his way home from school, he was attacked by a villain. all might saved him, and accidentally revealed a national fuckign secret, what the fuck – and told him he could not be a hero. presumably, that’s when the breakdown occurred. would have occurred. around that time the bakugou kid suicide baited him. or maybe it was all the time – hard to tell.

so midoriya decided to abandon heroics, and go into civil service. why?

government employees are encouraged not to reveal that quirk status for security purposes.

and even though he’d been offered the chance to become a hero on a silver platter, somehow he’d looked through that offer, and all he’d seen was all might telling him someone without a quirk couldn’t be a hero.

they could have bargained with him – they were the hero commission, they could forge any record – they could bill him as the next nedzu with an intelligence quirk, or some other invisble ability that would be impossible to prove or disprove but –

“i’m not giving that bakugou kid a license,” mera seethes quietly, “i’m telling you – i won’t do it, and if you try to make me, i’ll quit.”

izuku has the next month off work. and off school too. his mom talks with yokumiro-san, and then she talks with izuku, and asks if he’d like to go to correspondence school instead. the truth is, he would. less chance of seeing people that way. less chance of his secret being revealed.

he has a month off work, and also off school, so mom packs them both up, and they go to visit his dad in america. his dad works in florida – the craziest state of all.

izuku still checks his work email.

they’ve given him access to the files about the sekoto peak cold case, probably to keep his mind off things. turns out that would be a dead end, because the person who caused the incident is dead. touya todoroki, with all his power, and promise, had burned himself down to nothing after losing control of his quirk.

a quirk that produced the same blue flame that endeavor could – only briefly – sustain under pressure. a blue flame that dabi –

izuku puts two and two together, and gets five, but he’s not sure where the one carried over from.

“we’re not goingto investigate endeavor for child abuse,” says yokumiro-san on the other end of the line. he sounds exhausted.

“investigate his wife then! shouto todoroki got that burn on his face from somewhere, and she got institutionalized for a reason.”

“i preferred you when you were catatonic,” yokumiro-san says. it’s better this way. he’s one of the few people who don’t treat izuku like he’s… fragile. now that he’s emerged from his depressive episode – and in hindsight, he can recognize that’s exactly what he’d been experiencing – he can joke about it. except other people get weird and sad when he does.

“so,” says yokumiro-san the next time they’re on the phone. “we’re investigating endeavor for child abuse.”

he toys with the idea of a spy being sent into the league of villains. he’s copied in a memo he definitely shouldn’t be copied in. they plan on sending in hawks, but that’s not –

“why send one of ours,” he says, “when we can turn one of theirs?”

they’re already investigating endeavor. and dabi in a rendering, with his scars edited away, and his hair edited to a dark burgundy red – looks a whole lot like –

endeavor gets consequences. touya todoroki gets revenge and a clean slate. the commission gets a spy with a direct line to the leader of the league of villains.

when izuku returns from america, he goes back to work, and everyone pretends what happened hadn’t… happened.

then, there’s a war.

people get injured. and hurt. and someone needs to sling all the paperwork, and the commission is understaffed and –

by the time the war is over and he’s done with school, and all the villains are where they should be, and all the heroes – the one that survived – are also where they should be, there’s a permanent position open for him, mostly because at this point having him not working for the commission is more of a liability than anything.

his mom goes to kacchan’s graduation from ua. izuku spends the day playing cards with hawks in his hospital room after he almost got taken out by a fire breathing villain. he should be working, really, but they’ve had a slew of new interns, ever since he got round to upgrading that page of the commission website.

most days, he doesn’t bother with the scar wax anymore. there’s very few people who will make the connection, after all, and it’s not like he’s in the public eye. there’s no risk of him hurting kacchan’s hero career. he’d gone through yokumiro-san’s files and carefully edited the field that said REJECTED to say APPROVED, so kacchan could get his license. there was… no point, otherwise. if kacchan didn’t become a hero. there would be no point.

“you know the stuff he did to you is pretty fucked up, right?” touya asks. he’s smoking even though the hspc building is a no-smokers zone.

“sure,” says izuku. it doesn’t matter. that’s just how it is when you have a powerful quirk. when you’re meant to be a hero.

 “okay. as long as you know.”

izuku shrugs, smiles. it doesn’t matter.

you can’t be a –

the president had extended her offer again. and again. and again. he’d kept declining.

in the end, she gives up.

“for what it’s worth,” she says, as he’s helping her pack up her office, “i think you’d have made a great hero.”

he shakes his head with a smile.

“madam president,” he says gently, as though speaking to a child. “we both know i’m quirkless.”

he helps her take her diplomas off the wall and puts them on top of the last box. she takes an imperious survey of the empty room.

“well,” she says, “congratulations on the new job, then.”

he dips his head in a small nod, smiles delicately. “thank you. i’ll do my best.”

“hopefully the fires you have to put out will be smaller than the ones i had in my tenure,” she says, and hefts one box up, leaning it on her hip.

“little fires,” he agrees, “but probably all the time.”

he walks her to the elevator, pushing the trolley with the rest of her boxes. the silence between them is nice. companiable. he’s managed to curb the mumbling at last.

“well,” she says in the lobby, as the security staff help her get her staff over the barrier. “good luck… hero commission president.”

“enjoy your retirement, madam.”

he bows, and watches her back retreat into the afternoon sun. then he straightens out, waves at the guards, and makes his way back to the elevator. there’s work to be done.