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Izuku is 4 years old, and The Video is playing on the dusty old desktop computer in the home office.
The Video is the recorded live footage of his favorite Hero saving hundreds of people with a never-waning smile on his face, the sheer comfort and protected feeling that people get from watching or being near All Might taking root in those around him amidst the fiery disaster that followed a horrible villain attack.
Normally as he watched, Izuku felt nothing but giddy and excited. All Might was the kind of hero Izuku had wanted to be since he found out what a Hero was! But just days prior, Izuku's life fell apart at the seams. 2 sentences―6 words―25 letters.
"Sorry, kid. It's not gonna happen."
Izuku was Quirkless. He would never have the one thing that people were expected to have to be a Hero. Nothing to make him special like his peers, to make him less ordinary in a world full of mutations and transformations and even sentient beings. He was just... Izuku. Deku, now, according to Kacchan and their other friends. Kariage-kun and Hisue-kun and Tsubasa-kun never disagreed with Kacchan.
When he watched All Might in action, though, Izuku felt a part of himself realign with the stars. It was like a pull; a bone-deep desire to be closer, to stand by him, to touch. But he wasn't stupid enough to think that he would ever be on the same level as the world's top Hero.
He also knew that it was ridiculous that he felt that way. Those feelings were level with the way that one felt about their soulmates, and there was absolutely no way that there would ever be any small probability that useless Deku was soulmates with All Might. He'd watched an interview once where All Might was asked about the topic, and All Might had said that he had met his platonic other half some many years ago, and would never dream of revealing their identity to the world and possibly endanger them. Izuku was only 4―it just wasn't possible that he was said soulmate.
So Deku Izuku shoved the feelings down deep, locking them away within the smallest parts of his heart.
He was content to admire his Hero from afar.
As he grew up, Izuku never stopped feeling that strange connection to All Might whenever he saw him on screen. It was lessened when he would see the Hero's face in merch or on posters, but it was still there, tingling at the back of his mind and tugging at his heart. It evolved his love for All Might into a smile admiration to a near-obsession, and he never felt closer to a hero than he did to the Number One. Of course, he'd never met him before (Izuku probably would have fainted if he had), but something about All Might was so alluring to him.
His mother worried for him sometimes. How could she not? Izuku was Quirkless, yet he still aspired to be a Hero one day just like his soulmate? useless Deku's never gonna have a soulmate! idol. Instead of fleeing from the scenes of Hero battles, he stayed and observed and wrote in his notebooks. Observations of different Quirks, techniques used, body movements, and other things he could integrate into his own person one day so he could be just like them: Fighting to save the people and inspire with a smile.
Some nights, when he would come home bruised and bleeding from school and hide away in the bathroom to clean himself up, Izuku would hear a voice in his dreams. He didn't know whose it was, or why it seemed to comfort him so well, but every time he heard it, Izuku would wake up feeling refreshed and reassured that he was doing great.
"Your time will come," it would tell him. "Destiny calls for the Ninth."
Though he had no idea what it meant, the words would ease a pressure in his chest. It was right. His time would come one day. Maybe not tomorrow, or the next year, even, but he would get there. He would be a Hero.
The day that Izuku Deku's former-best-friend-turned-bully had told him to kill himself, his heart nearly reached its final cracking point, just millimetres from shattering into tiny, irreparable pieces.
Kacchan had despised him ever since his diagnosis―that was no secret. Deku was weaker than him, and Kacchan hated everything he viewed as weak.
But all Deku had ever done was look up to him, not look down. Kacchan was his image of victory, the closest person to him to being a Pro Hero. He was everything a hero should be: Headstrong, determined, powerful, not afraid of anything.
Then...
"Just pray that you'll be born with a Quirk in your next life, and take a swan dive off the roof of the building!"
Let it never be said that Deku would consider anything of the sort. Sure, over the years he'd been told this by classmates before. The graffiti on his desk, the insults thrown in his face, the trippings and beatings and beratings from his peers. He wasn't selfish enough, though, to leave his mom behind over something so trivial as having someone write on his desk or tell him he wasn't good enough. Because, let's be honest, his mom would be the only one to care, and his dad had left a long time ago. It would destroy his mom if he left her. So he never even gave it a thought.
That didn't mean that hearing the words from someone so important to him and who had been a part of his life for so long―even if it hadn't been in a positive way for a long time―hurt any less.
His dreams got increasingly stranger as years passed by. They only started at the beginning of middle school, in his first year, but now, in the middle of his third, they were more prominent than ever. The day that Kacchan had told him to take a swan dive, Deku Izuku allowed himself to break down in the safety of his dark, empty mind.
Even though he had met All Might earlier that day, everything had been a whirlwind of built-up emotions that he couldn't release. From what Kacchan said to him, then the feeling of drowning can't breathe everything's getting darker the Sludge Villain suffocating him, being told he couldn't be a Hero by the man he'd idolized his whole life, then the Sludge Villain attacking Kacchan, then being told that, yes, he could be a Hero.
Though no one was there with him inside his lonely dreamscape, Izuku still heard that voice, whispering reassurances and sweet comforts to him while he cried inside an invisible embrace.
It wasn't until the U.A. Sports Festival that Izuku suspected something was different about One for All than he'd originally thought. Yes, he knew that it was passed down through generations that eventually led to himself being a holder. He also knew it was a stockpiling Quirk.
But then Shinsou-kun put him under his Brainwashing, and Izuku saw a plethora of shadowed figures staring at him from the tunnel he'd come out of at the start of the match. He could feel their gazes on him as he forcefully walked toward the white boundary line of the arena ring. His body ached to move toward them instead, but the command from Shinsou-kun was making his head slightly foggy, and his control was near-to-none.
He begged his legs to stop moving, to halt and turn around, to fight more. He had to prove himself, for All Might, for his mom, for his classmates.
One of the shadows reached for him with an outstretched hand, and One for All seemed to have a mind of its own.
Izuku broke free from the hold over his mind and body, and he won the match with ease.
He'd never told anyone about his strange dreams before; the vacant blackness or the soothing, gentle voice he sometimes heard. Nothing mentioned to a single soul of the ghostly feeling of fingertips brushing the back of his neck or the cold warmth of a caress to his forehead after a particularly harrowing nightmare. These odd dreams were the single solace he'd had in his life for the last few years, and though he didn't know what they meant, Izuku would never dream of sharing them with anyone.
They'd likely lock him away and accuse insanity as he pleaded for freedom, claimed injustice. His dreams were his alone, and a small, desperate part of himself screamed that The Voice made him feel less alone in life. Even if he had more people to rely on now, others who would actually listen when he spoke and consider taking him seriously, he couldn't bring himself to do it.
And if those years-long, deep-buried feelings in his fissured heart told him that this new experience with One for All had something to do with these dreams, Izuku shut them behind a door with nine locks and didn't bother thinking about it again.
The very night that Aizawa-sensei had informed his class that they would be having a joint training session with Class 1-B first thing in the morning for Foundational Heroics, Izuku had another dream.
Only this time, it was much more than any of the previous ones. It wasn't simply him, alone in darkness, waiting for The Voice to speak to him as he usually did.
Izuku wasn't alone this time.
The first thing Izuku noticed was his lack of mobility. If that wasn't enough to ignite a spark of panic in his chest, then the seven figures standing to his side definitely were. But... Weren't there supposed to be eight? It could only be a dream stemming from his connection to One for All, if there were others in his mindscape with him this time. With Izuku being number Nine, there should be eight others, but one was missing.
He heard The Voice then, arguing with another he recognized for much worse reasons. It was All For One, arguing with his brother.
Izuku knew some of this story. All Might had told him how One for All came to be in the beginning: All For One's younger brother was assumed Quirkless, so he forced a stockpiling power on him, which First then passed on to Second when he discovered he'd had a Quirk all along. It's how the centuries-long feud between All For One and One for All began.
As he watched the argument a ways away with anxious interest, Izuku listened intently to the words said. If his Quirk was giving him this dream, it meant that something important was coming soon for him, and he needed to be of keen interest.
But he couldn't help the stirring in his heart and stomach when he realized The Voice was coming from First; the frail-looking, sickly man with unkempt, stark-white hair and an intense, desperate look on his face as he tried to get through to his older brother, to convince him to listen to what he was saying and to see reason.
It was the same voice that had been haunting him for years, shadowing his thoughts and uplifting him in his times of deepest loneliness.
The words from years before still rang clear in his head. "Your time will come. Destiny calls for the Ninth."
Izuku was always meant to hold One for All, he knew now. He understood. But he still didn't understand how First had been speaking to him these past few years in his dreams when he was stuck within One for All with the other vestiges.
Scenes changed, the brothers argued, society fell before his eyes.
Then, First was walking toward him with a noticeable hunch in his harrowed shoulders, and Izuku longed to be able to speak to him the way the man had done for him for so long. To respond to what was being said to him.
"I wish I could show you more," First told him softly. "But I cannot. You're only able to reach 20% right now. Soon, you will no longer be in the dark, I swear it to you."
First reached out his arm, and Izuku reached back. His arm was a shadow, but his hand was still intact. He could touch. He needed to touch. He ached for it.
"I will see you again soon, Izuku."
Fingertips brushed against the spaces between Izuku's crooked, scarred appendages,
and his
world
shattered.
Izuku woke to the sound of glass exploding and wind rushing in his ears. He gasped for breath, rolling over onto his knees and clutching his arm tightly. Red crisscrosses of pure power laced up his arm and sunk into his body, igniting his Quirk beneath his skin to such a point he felt like his blood was boiling.
When the red faded and only battle scars were left on his skin, Izuku watched with wide eyes and winded pants as white color painted his skin in jagged, uneven strokes. From the spaces between his fingers, where First had touched, to the middle of his forearm.
White lightning, Izuku realized. It's... It's a soulmark.
His soulmate is the First holder of One for All.
And he's been dead for hundreds of years.
When Aoyama raced into his room from next door at the commotion that had been made, kneeling down next to Izuku and asking him if he was alright, Izuku shoved his arm under his pillow and forced a relaxed smile on his face.
"I'm alright, Aoyama-kun, thanks for being concerned. My Quirk acted up in my sleep, I'm sorry for waking you."
He never returned to the bittersweet hold of slumber that early morning.
Not twelve hours later, One for All erupted in the middle of a training exercise.
Panicking. No control, no thoughts in his head except for stop stop please I don't know what to do what's happening to me what the hell is going on, and Izuku had no coherency left in him to think of a way to get his Quirk under wraps. Because that's what it was right? It's One for All, but in a way he'd never manifested before. Never expected.
Uraraka-chan was clinging to him, trying to calm him down and allow him to focus on gaining some semblance of restraint, to pull the foreign, black cirri into himself and to cease the havoc and destruction he'd wreaked in Ground Gamma. Her voice was loud in his ear, arms a vice around his shoulders and legs the same around his waist, but Izuku wasn't listening. How could he? No amount of words she could say would help him in this situation. She wasn't one of his teachers, his mentors, or a vestige that could give him advice.
Then, "Midoriya!"
His gaze snapped to Shinsou-kun, who had a hand clutched around his capture weapon and another having just pulled down his voice modifier. A feral grin stretched across his face. "Fight me!"
Izuku hesitated. He couldn't fight someone like this. His training exercise couldn't go on until his Quirk was controlled, and Aizawa-sensei wasn't nearby to use Erasure on him. Then, he remembered the Sports Festival, and how hard he was fighting to break free from Brainwashing in their match against one another. Shinsou-kun must have felt his mental thrashing and writhing to escape and fight.
So, he responded with a shout of agony and desperation.
His brain blanked, and he was falling, but he trusted Uraraka-chan to keep him afloat and not let him become a puddle of splattered Izuku on the ground.
He let himself be pulled into the mindscape that tugged at him. Answers were needed, and he preferred them as soon as possible.
Izuku was met with the face of one of the vestiges, who looked more corporeal than he last remembered seeing them before he woke from his dream early that morning. He revealed himself to be Daigorou Banjou, the Fifth. Hero name: Lariat. Quirk: Blackwhip. He explained his Quirk to Izuku, how to use it, and how the added generations of One for All had strengthened it, and now it was Izuku's turn to use it to become a hero like he had.
No matter how gentle, a sudden hand on his head normally would have startled him. Somewhere in the years, though, Izuku had recognized this utopia as a safe place, and he turned his head (mouth still covered, only various parts of his body able to be tangible while in there due to his limited progress with One for All), and he smiled with his eyes when First stood behind him with a small-sad-smiling expression.
"You are not alone anymore, Izuku. We are with you."
He yearned to respond, to say something in return, to ask his soulmate's name, even, but he could only express himself with wide, viridian eyes.
When he glanced back, barely paying Daigorou-san any attention anymore, he saw the larger man was gone, and it was only him and First.
"I said we would see each other soon," First's smile turned more genuine, soft. "Our situation is quite complicated, as you've likely figured. But even if not there physically, I am always with you."
Izuku attempted his question with his eyes, trying to convey that, You know my name, but I don't know yours.
First smiled wider, though it wasn't a grin. He never grinned, only close-lipped upturns of the corners of his mouth. "It's been a long time since someone has asked me for my true name. Here I have only been known as First. My name is Shigaraki Yoichi."
Despite the instant connection he made with the family name and a familiar villain he knew, Izuku's bodiless shoulders slumped with relief that he now knew more about his destined other half. Yoichi, he mentally repeated. It feels right.
"You must go back, Izuku," Yoichi told him, smile disappearing. His eyes remained caring. "Your classmates are worried and waiting, and you are falling."
When will I see you again? Izuku asked with his gaze only.
Yoichi pressed their foreheads together, and Izuku's skin sung with the small contact. "You won't be kept waiting long. I promise."
"Now wake up, Hero Deku. They're waiting on you."
Blackwhip retreated back into Izuku's body, and his training resumed once it was confirmed that he was alright and it wouldn't happen again.
Izuku's team won in the end, but his thoughts were elsewhere.
"Yoichi..." he whispered to himself, tracing the lines of his soulmark hidden beneath layers of his hero costume.
A murmur to the breeze, "I'll be waiting."
Izuku started wearing his compression sleeve more often after he received his soulmark. It wasn't unusual for him to be seen wearing it, especially during training, but when he began to wear it around Height's Alliance as well, his classmates gave him more than one confused, concerned glance.
He had several of them, of course, and usually only wore the one that didn't cover his hand, but now that he'd gotten his mark from Yoichi, he wore the gloved version everywhere he went unless he was in the private safety of his own dorm room. The only thing the gloved sleeve left uncovered were his fingers, which wasn't a problem since the length of his soulmark started between his fingers and not on them.
It wasn't that he was ashamed of it, no, absolutely not. There were many factors that went into his decision to hide his mark.
- Even to those who knew about One for All's existence, and that it was evolving rapidly under Izuku's hold, he didn't know how to explain that he'd suddenly got a soulmark from making hand contact with a centuries-old ghost in his head that haunted his Quirk.
- To his classmates (sans Kacchan, obviously) and maybe even teachers, who didn't know of One for All, he couldn't explain this either. They would have questions, would want to meet his fated platonic life partner.
- To All Might, the knowledge would only concern him. He would be happy that Izuku did turn out to have a soulmate, like he had found David Shield in his early days as a hero in the United States, but he would worry for his mental state at the fact that his soulmate was a ghost. Which, fair.
- And... he kind of wanted to keep it to himself. Izuku, in all his life, had never been intentionally selfish about anything. He was an emotional and grateful person by nature. So, this once, Izuku wanted to have one thing simply for him that he had no obligation to share with anyone, even if he could. Yoichi was his soulmate. Dead or alive, be damned.
So, when he was asked if his chronic pain had started to flare up badly due to his 'Quirk Awakening' in training, Izuku went along with it. He hated lying, he did, but this was different. It was personal. He didn't have to tell anyone if he didn't want to, and he chose to keep his soulmate and their mark for his own eyes and bleeding heart only.
After learning he met with All Might and Kacchan and discovered he would be manifesting all of the Quirks of the previous holders, Izuku felt nothing but dread. He barely had a handle on the strength that came with One for All, and now he would be getting six more Quirks?
Never in his life would he regret receiving One for All from All Might. It gave him a chance, connected him with his soulmate, how could he possibly regret it? He could handle his Quirk coming with a complicated backstory and an included archnemesis. Sure, no problem. But, this? This was a bit overwhelming, and all Izuku wanted to do was go back to his dorm and ponder over his Latest Life Crisis.
It had been a few days since he'd seen Yoichi, too, and despite that, Izuku missed him. Though their situation was strange, and he didn't know Yoichi inside and out like most people did with their soulmates, Izuku's whole being burned for his presence.
But here he was, stuck walking back to Heights Alliance with Kacchan after the meeting, in awkward silence.
Things had been different between them since their fight at Ground Beta, and Kacchan had been... not nicer, per se, but more... unassertive? Yeah. Unassertive. Still harsh in personality as he always had been, but slightly less so.
Kacchan's hands were shoved deep in his pockets, easily seen to the eye that they were clenched into fists even through the fabric. He kept glancing at Izuku from the corners of his eyes, and Izuku resolved not to say anything until Kacchan was ready. That was the trick with him, Izuku found over the years. If he was deep in thought, you don't interrupt. You wait for him to finish gathering what he wanted to say, or things would go downhill at the speed of sound.
Finally, after a long few minutes, Kacchan reserved his gaze forward, no longer looking at Izuku in his peripheral sight. "So what's the real reason you've been wearing that stupid fuckin' sleeve?"
Izuku startled. He didn't know what he was expecting Kacchan to say, but it wasn't that. His shoulders rose with tension.
"Like I told everyone else," he said tightly. "Just the chronic pain from my joints acting up. I'm trying to avoid straining them."
"Right," Kacchan scoffed. "Round Cheeks told Four Eyes you hated that stupid full-arm glove thing, I heard her yesterday. Now you wear it every fuckin' day around the dorms and in classes. As much as I fuckin' hate it, I've known you our entire damn lives. I know when you're bullshitting, Deku."
"Leave it alone, Kacchan."
"Hah?" the blond's eyebrows rose irritably. "Fuck you mean, 'leave it'? It can't be that fuckin' bad."
Izuku's jaw clenched. In time, he'd grown to ignore how annoyed some of Kacchan's comments and prying demands made him, but this was different entirely. They'd made significant progress in their relationship lately, and Izuku would do anything to keep it from going back on a downward decline, but Izuku never felt such a need to snap back at a person before. Not even while fighting villains who taunted him with this-that-and-the-other.
Instead, he deflected. "Why do you even care?"
It worked. Kacchan's hackles raised once more. "I don't, you damned nerd. Just sayin' that something's obviously fuckin' weird."
Yeah, Izuku mentally snorted. I met the other half of my soul, and turns out he's been dead for a couple dozen decades. Not weird at all, nope.
He fiddled with the edge of the sleeve and pulled it up from where it had slid down slightly below his elbow. A couple more centimetres and it would have uncovered bits of his soulmark. "It's nothing."
"Whatever you say, Deku."
It's nothing. Yeah, right.
This wasn't a normal dream, that much was clear from the moment Izuku fully sunk into sleep and came to complete awareness in his fantastical unconscious mind. There was no empty void, no freezing-hot touches of a dead soulmate.
He was alone, in the center of an empty Ground Beta under a night sky. A cold detachment from the bustling world of the wakeful. A faux city null of anything lively.
"It's time," Yoichi's voice whispered in his mind, though Izuku could not feel him physically nearby. "The fate of the Ninth is approaching."
"Yoichi, what's going on?" Izuku's voice was calm, despite his obvious confusion and concern. He wasn't quite to the state of panic, but the continued dubiety would get him there if he wasn't made aware of what was happening. This wasn't like his normal Souldreams or One for All visions.
His Quirk flickered without prompting, and Izuku nearly jumped out of his skin. He hadn't done anything to call it on, so why..?
Thunder boomed overhead, and electricity crackled around him in rivulets and and waves, uncontrolled as an ocean during a storm. Smoke gathered around him, gathering at his feet and pooling near his ankles, rising upward and spreading outward from his body.
Blackwhip unleashed itself from his wrists, and this time, Izuku felt no pain or discomfort. They weren't frenzied and thrashing wildly through the air like they were during the training exercise when they manifested, only writhed gently in a caged sphere around his body. A small, dull buzz was sounding in the back of his mind, traveling through his nerves and down his spine and inside every limb and ligament. It was pleasant, in a way.
More smoke rose from the ground, and with it, Izuku slowly losing gravity himself. It was almost like Uraraka-chan's Quirk, but it felt... It felt like it belonged with him. Was this Float? All Might's master's Quirk?
In seconds, so quick, though they felt like millennia, Izuku was high above the simulated city of Ground Beta and gazing down on the buildings and skyscrapers and road lines below, getting smaller and smaller with each meter he rose. Izuku shut his eyes and breathed in the fresh air of the upper troposphere.
"One for All will end with Midoriya Izuku," Yoichi's voice whispered over the howling hurricane of wind that Blackwhip made as it swirled around him in its protective bubble shape. "Destiny has called for the Ninth, and he is here."
The colors of history burst behind Izuku's closed lids, lights of generations past―shining, burning, blinding―illuminate from the depths of once-forest-green eyes turned an unsettling, purely glowing white upon their reopening.
Izuku felt as if he were among the stars. Energy thrummed beneath his skin, gratifying in a way he'd never experienced before in his life. His Quirks were a controlled chaos surrounding his being, and everything felt right.
He remembered a time long ago, when Izuku's universe had been shattered the day he was told he would never get a Quirk. The underlying implications of that were clear, even to his child self. He would never amount to anything, be anything. He watched the All Might video, and he felt an insane pull toward the Hero on the screen, to be a single planet to his Sun, a minuscule solar system of their own.
Now, he would be a Sun; A bright star in the center of revolving bodies of life.
Izuku would be the greatest Hero the universe had ever seen.
He was sure of it.
For the second time in a week, Izuku woke with his Quirk activated. This time, though, nothing was destroyed. No windows shattered, none of his things were blown around the room, he just lay there calmly, surrounded by teal electricity and the muted scent of ozone.
The lights were turned out still, the only light coming from the moon through his balcony doors and from Izuku himself.
On autopilot, Izuku threw his covers off and meandered to his bathroom, not even bothering to flip the switch in there either. The luminosity of One for All was enough to brighten the room on its own. He stared into his reflection in the mirror with awed silence.
His eyes were shining white in entirety, the glow covering his irises and pupils to create a haunting, yet enticing, image that somehow screamed of both empty voids and brimful spriteliness.
Sparks flew from his body, energy silently crackling around him in buoyant Lichtenberg patterns.
Izuku lifted his arm and glanced at his soulmark, tears springing to his eyes as he traced the patterns on his buzzing skin. The white lightning seemed to hum under his touch, illuminating beneath his fingertips with each stroke over the color.
His gaze turned back to the mirror, and Izuku raised his hand further, hovering over the glass surface.
When he made contact with his reflection, his vision whited for a century of seconds, and when his sight returned, Izuku gasped.
In place of his likeness stood Yoichi, surrounded by the same energy as Izuku and brightening the darkness of the bathroom on his own end. It was like gazing into a looking glass of a parallel universe. The arm that was once a mirror of Izuku's was now Yoichi's, and on his arm that had made contact with Izuku's, a matching soulmark extended from his fingertips to mid-forearm similar to his own. It was colored a greenish-teal, unlike Izuku's own white one.
The tears gathered in his ducts fell of their own accord, silent and unassuming compared to any other tears Midoriya "Crybaby Deku" Izuku normally shed.
"Yoichi..." he breathed. "You're... You're here."
"I am," the sickly man smiled gently. "As are you, Izuku."
"We are here," Izuku said, pressing his hand harder to the mirror in a solemn attempt to get closer, as if it were possible to reach through the glass and link their fingers together.
"We are here," Yoichi nodded. "We'll never be apart. We are always together."
Izuku sobbed quietly. "Promise? You won't leave me alone again?"
"Never. I am here to stay."
"I'll hold you to that," Izuku told him, eyes watering heavier.
"I look forward to it."