Can't See
Black.
It encases him like dripping ink, painting his eyelids with a murky darkness he can’t escape.
Occasional flashes of color snake across his vision as lightning bursts of pain pound in time with his heartbeat.
The pain.
It’s searing heat that radiates from his eyes and sinks into his skull, setting his brain on fire.
Izuku wants to yank gray matter out through his eye sockets to make it stop, and he’s sure his hands must be clawing at his face.
He can’t feel them though.
Every other sense is blocked out, leaving only the pain and darkness.
The fire sears lower, sinking down past his nose, filtering through his eustachian tubes, dripping into his ears. He can feel it running through his sinuses and burning a path through his nerves. With it goes the senses that he didn’t know he could still feel, his hearing turning to a low buzz and smell becoming ash and blood.
He’s sure he’s sobbing by now, screaming unintelligibly as he desperately tries to shove the darkness aside. Instead, it presses down on him, weighing on his chest and making it difficult to breathe. Izuku attempts to suck in deep breaths, but he can’t hear the air move, can’t feel it pass his lips and slip down to his lungs.
The void sucks him in. It drowns him in it’s pitch-black heat. Izuku feels like it is consuming him, eating through his skin and wearing down his bones. He’s no longer a human being, but an entity made from fire and brimstone, created in Hephaestus’s forge, melting and shifting into an unholy creature. When he rises from this, if he ever does, he will arise as a devil from hell to rain down his curse upon the land.
The only thought that cuts through it all is, “Kacchan,”.
---
A sharp piercing brings him back to consciousness, pounding in time with his skull as he struggles to sit up.
Cold hands gently tug his arm and Izuku yanks bodily away from them.
“Izuku, honey, it’s me,” a familiar voice screams in his ears.
Izuku claps his hands over his ears, cringing at the volume, when sound starts to leak past his cupped hands.
The shrill beeping still pounding next to his head, the squeaking of shoes on linoleum, a baby screaming at the top of their lungs, the rustling of papers, the yelling of nurses across the floor-
It’s all so loud it overwhelms him like a tidal wave, crashing upon his ears in pitched waves. His teeth ache with the volume. Lungs burning as he gasps in breaths, the vibrations of the sound around him rattling his ribs. He must be the center of a hurricane of sound, over amplified and shrieking in his ears as it wraps around him with wind and rain.
If he just opens his eyes, maybe he could find something to hang onto. He just needs an anchor to ground him long enough to orient himself. He can find his way out of the storm of sound, even try to identify why the world is screaming at him, if he could just see his mother’s face.
But when he opens his eyes there’s…nothing.
A scream tears from his throat, hands turning to claws and digging into his head.
“I can’t see!” Izuku cries, hands moving from his ears to what feels like crisp bandages wrapping his eyes.
“I can’t see,” he sobs, “Why can’t I see?”
A warm, familiar embrace shoves the overwhelming noise and fear of the darkness aside, replacing it with the comfort of the only person he knows he trusts.
“Mama, mama my eyes,” Izuku whispers.
“I know baby,” Inko replies loudly, too loudly.
“Please,” he begs, “Stop yelling.”
“Yelling? Izuku, love, I’m barely whispering?”
Izuku lets out another sob, gripping tightly to his mother’s arm. “Everything is so loud, and it’s so dark. Mama, please, what’s going on?”
Inko runs a soft hand through his curls, cradling him to her chest as she rocks gently back and forth.
“There was an accident,” Inko’s gentle voice is finally at a decent volume, “you were so brave Izuku, but the villain, his quirk, it got into your eyes and- and-”
Her voice breaks off into cries of her own as she attempts to explain what happened to him. The Midoriya’s were always sympathetic criers, tears and empathy an easy companion, but something about his mother’s cries felt different than normal.
“Why don’t,” she sniffs slightly, “Why don’t you rest, we’ll talk about it later.”
Izuku nods into her shoulder and curls tighter to her side, hand running back and forth over the bandage that wraps around his head as he settles into rest.
---
When Izuku wakes up next, he’s calmer, asking his mom if Kacchan was alright and to explain what happened to his eyes.
Apparently, when Izuku had been walking home from school there had been a villain attack. One that he and Kacchan had been caught up in. The villain had been holding Kacchan hostage, a thing made of slime that had been trying to escape using him as a puppet. Izuku had been walking home when he encountered them.
From what he remembers, the heroes that were nearby had just stood around while the villain attacked Kacchan, saying that their quirks weren’t suited for the situation. They just stood there.
Izuku had scoffed, lost as to why pro-heroes weren’t able to do something to save his best friend. He remembers feeling an ache deep in his soul, an ache to do something, anything as he watched Kacchan struggle to breath. His friend was going to die right in front of him and not a single person, not a single hero, was going to help.
The ache turned into an urge, and before he knew it his bright red sneakers were slapping the concrete as he sprinted towards the villain, chucking his equally bright yellow backpack at the thing.
That is the last thing he clearly remembers. Watching his schoolbag sail toward nasty, green slime and nailing it in the eye. It had given Kacchan enough time to get in a deep breath, saving him from suffocating.
From there, it’s slightly hazy before the burning pain began. Vague ideas of feeling himself curled on the ground, hands clawing at his skin that felt like it was being dipped in acid.
All Might had apparently shown and defeated the villain in one punch, creating insane enough wind pressure to change the weather.
The blowback from All Might’s attack had splashed some of the slime villain towards Izuku, who had crouched down to the ground after his own attack, and had gotten into his eyes. The burning pain had been chemicals from the slime burning his retinas, eating into his sinuses and back of his throat.
The doctor’s had been able to heal the damage in his sinuses and throat, even his ears had been mostly healed, but because his eyes were hit with the most amount of sludge they weren’t able to be healed.
While part of Izuku’s mind wanted to analyze the chemical breakdown of this villain’s quirk, a majority of him was terrified of a life without his vision.
If he was blind, could he still be a hero?
When he asked his mom that question, she held him and sobbed again, just like she had when they were told that Izuku was quirkless.
No, she didn’t believe he could be a hero.
If no one was going to believe in him, Izuku was going to have to believe in himself.
---
Hours after the recounting of the accident, Izuku is attempting to feed himself. He’s fairly successful, doing it blind (Ha), but his mom keeps trying to intercede and guide his fork to his mouth.
“Ma, I can do it. I know the path of a fork to my mouth,” Izuku grumbles and bats her hand away.
“Sorry honey, I’m just trying to help. I’m sure this is going to be a big adjustment for both of us,” she sighs. Her clothes rustle and Izuku believes that she must be tucking her hands into her lap. It’s a nervous tick of hers to bring her hands in close and wring them, something Izuku has picked up himself. Even at eight he’s self aware enough to know that he inherited his mother’s anxious personality.
The soft click of the door opening echoes in his ears and Izuku snaps his head to the door.
“Ah, sorry to interrupt your dinner. I’m just here to do a bit more healing?” A new voice calls.
It’s loud, just like his mother’s had been when he first awoke. But there’s a warmth to it. It’s soothing, like the person is purposely pitching their words to be comforting instead of intrusive. And while the sound pierces his ears, it also calms his nerves. This person is some type of nurse or doctor, and the tone of their voice is kind.
“You're not,” his mother’s quiet reply interrupts his revelry, “Izuku is a bit sensitive right now. The doctors think it’s a type of migraine from losing his vision.”
“To be expected. His senses are trying to compensate,” the kind voice replies, much, much softer than before.
Izuku loses the tension he hadn’t even known was there. The new person’s voice at this level is a soothing balm on his nerves.
“I’m Dr. Nishinoya. I helped with some of your healing before, but I had to stop after we depleted a lot of your body’s natural vitamins and minerals. If you wouldn’t mind, I would love to do the last little bit since we have you on an IV drip now.” Dr. Nishinoya says.
Izuku can hear the smile in her polite tone as she speaks, like she’s really putting emphasis in her words to be empathetic. He appreciates that. Now that he can’t see her face he’s having to rely on vocal cues to figure out her tone.
“Only if you’re up to it ‘Zuku,” his mom whispers.
He nods and smiles brightly at the doctor. “Of course! Can you tell me what you’ll be healing though?”
“Right, you were under anesthesia while I was working. I assume your mother has explained the accident that you had?”
Izuku nods as his reply, too excited to hear what this doctor’s quirk might be to think back on the story his mother had told him.
“Well, as you know, the villain that you encountered was made of a chemical substance that manifested as slime. When All Might punched the villain, the wind of his attack broke the villain apart and some of it landed on you. This included landing on your face and head. It happened to splash into your eyes, but also into your nose, sinus cavities, and down your eustachian tubes. Your eustachian tubes connect the back of your nose and throat with your sinuses, so the chemicals leaked down the tubes and into your ears. It damaged your middle ear and then started to damage the organ of hearing in your inner ear called the cochlea. That’s where I come in.” Dr. Nishinoya explained.
“So… you have some type of hearing restoration quirk?” Izuku asked quietly.
“Not quite. I actually have a hair growth quirk. I stimulate the keratin in your body to produce more hair, and while some people suggested I be a hairdresser because of it, I found other uses that it could help with. You have hairs all over your body, including in your very inner ear. The cochlea, which is the organ of hearing in your inner ear that processes sound before sending the signal to your brain, is actually made up of tonotopically arranged hair cells. It’s the first stop sound makes before it can be sent up to your brain to be deciphered, kind of like telephone wires sorting out a signal. The little hairs in there are arranged from treble to bass like the keys on a piano, sorting the information for your brain to understand. When the chemical got into your ear, there was a doctor with a time based rewind quirk that was able to fix the structural damage, though it didn’t fix those hair cells and a few other things in your ears and eyes. I’ve regrown the hair cells in your cochlea and there’s just a bit more I wanted to do.”
Izuku could feel himself starting to bounce excitedly as the doctor spoke. She was right, there were so many applications to the human body that she could use her quirk for.
“So you control the keratin in someone’s body and use it to grow different hair cells? Can you control the rate at which the hair grows? If you can control keratin, do you think you could work with other proteins to help regenerate other types of tissue? If you could, you could potentially create proteins that help with skin cell activity or muscle regrowth…” Izuku rambled, his words turning to mumbles as he mulled over the intricacies of Dr. Nishinoya’s quirk.
The doctor was silent as Izuku asked his questions, stunned by the intricacies of her quirk being dissected by an eight year old.
“Does he always ask questions like that?” Dr. Nishinoya whispered to Inko Midoriya.
“I like quirks!” Izuku replied to her barely-above-a-breath words, “I’ve been analyzing them since I was um-”
He cuts himself off in embarrassment. Of course, this doctor already knows that he’s quirkless. It would be stamped in bright red on his file. It would have been a deciding factor in whether or not she was willing to treat him. It must not be an issue if she’s here and offering him more healing than what is absolutely necessary to keep him alive, legally anyways, but the word still tastes bitter in his mouth whenever he goes to speak it.
“It’s not a bad thing, Midoriya-kun. I’m impressed by your knowledge. It would be good for you to continue the hobby.” Dr. Nishinoya soothed, stopping his spiral into a deep well of self-doubt.
Izuku could feel his cheeks starting to burn as a blush crept up his face. He hadn’t heard anyone but his mother compliment his quirk analysis. The bullies at school thought his mumbling was scary. If they didn’t like his mumbling, he couldn’t imagine what would happen when they found his notebooks.
“T-thank you. I’ll keep that in mind. Um, what do you need to do to heal?” He quickly changed the subject.
Footfalls vibrated the floor and tapped against his eardrums, alerting him to Dr. Nishinoya’s exact path as she crossed the linoleum to his bed. She was now standing to his right, on the opposite side of his IV stand and heart monitor, hands resting on the railing of his hospital bed.
“I just need to place my hands on your head. You might feel a bit tired by the time I’m done, but nothing too intense.”
Izuku nodded and leaned his head toward the doctor to indicate he was ready.
Gentle hands raked through the long curls on the side of his head before settling over his ears. The soft hum of her quirk as she began to work lulled Izuku into a sense of calm.
Wait-
The hum of her quirk?
Izuku’s hand snapped up to the doctor’s wrist, the whirring in his ears pausing as if she had stopped her quirk.
“Midoriya-kun, are you alright?” Dr. Nishinoya asked, concern clear in his voice.
“Y-yes, sorry. I was falling asleep and scared myself. Sorry, doctor,” He tried to cover with embarrassment.
The doctor hummed her affirmative before returning to her healing, the buzz once again returning to his ears.
Izuku could hear her quirk.